A Letter To The Commercial For The Movie “Lockout”

Dear Lockout,

You look like a silly-ass movie. As such, I will probably watch you three times and love it. But, please, stop pretending that you aren’t a silly-ass movie. You are a movie about a prison break in space that has shitty, generic rock music playing during your commercial – rock music with the highly lame lyric “I’m a badass!”

You’re silly, so stop pretending you aren’t.

Case in point: your original trailer and TV spot contained the line “Mister President, there’s been a massive takeover on Space Prison MS-1.”

That is, without question, one of the lamest sci-fi lines ever written. That’s the kind of line you would write if you were trying to write a sketch parodying terrible sci-fi movies. What’s worse, in a new commercial, one that I saw during last night’s episode of South Park, the line had been modified so the person delivering it says, “There’s been a takeover on MS-1.”

Really, Lockout? After weeks and weeks of heavy rotation, you alter the line in the commercial now? Didn’t anybody in your marketing department pick up on the corniness of that line before it was kicked out in to the world? The words “space prison” by themselves should have tipped you off, not the mention the words “Mister President,” which is a common line in silly-ass action movies that adds an air of drama to the poorly manufactured drama of the movie. “Mister President” followed by anything is inherently corny. Adding the words “space prison” means you aren’t ashamed of it. If you remove that silly-ass line from the silly-ass commercial from what will assuredly be a silly-ass movie, you’re admitting that you test screened that commercial way too late in the process; specifically, after the commercial had been airing for weeks. Only when you got those suggestion cards back did you realize that line sounds like it’s being spoken to Will Farrell as he plays the president, and his response will be “Get me MacGruber!” or “Get Agent Cody Banks on the phone! Now!”

"Only Agent Cody Banks can stop the aliens from sucking out our brains!!"

It would then be immediately followed by a cut to MacGruber/Agent Cody Banks as he is meditating in a Buddhist monastery, having left the horrors of war behind to lead a life of peace.

Lockout, I’m going to give you a piece of advice my middle school guidance counselor once told our class during self-esteem week: just be yourself. Stop pretending you are anything other than what you are, which is a movie about a prison break…IIINN SPAAAACE- Space-space!!