Fan-Made Trailer Double Feature: Paper 'Prometheus', Hot Dog 'Dark Knight Rises'

The success of a trailer can be measured in a million different ways — through total views, through audience tracking, through informal polls, through detailed analyses — but of the newest, and most enjoyable, methods may be to see how many parodies spring up around it. After all, in the digital age, can a movie really say it's made a mark on pop culture until it's spawned at least a couple of sweded versions or oddball mash-ups?

By that standard, the marketing for Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises are doing very well indeed. Two new videos have sprung up recent days, one a painstakingly recreated Prometheus trailer done all with paper and flashlights, the other a goofy take on the Dark Knight Rises paper done with hot dogs. Watch both after the jump.

One of the aspects Fox's real Prometheus trailer has going for it is its stunning, impeccably rendered special effects, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see that Betz's much, much lower-rent paper version works as well as it does. Ridley Scott's indelible imagery will be presented in glorious 3D when Prometheus opens this Friday, June 8, but it turns out it looks pretty striking in 2D as well. And that Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, and Noomi Rapace are still fantastic actors even in paper form.

Taking a much more absurdist approach to its inspiration is Sausage Party's The Dark Knight Rises trailer, which follows the beats of the original only with grocery store hot dogs standing in for all the various characters. I think we may have covered this on Superhero Bits previously, but I couldn't resist pairing it with paper Prometheus for a fan-made short-film double feature.

[via The AV Club]

Overall, the hot dogs make this a much sillier affair than the real gloom-and-doom version, but man, the close-ups of those googly eyes are freaking me out. All the weiners just look so dead inside. Christopher Nolan's real, probably totally hot dog-free version of The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.