The Coens Bros only make two types of films. they make a lot of different pairs of two types of films, and for the purposes of this article, we will focus on the tone: farces, and dramas. Sometimes, the farces are dramatic, and sometimes the dramas are absurd, but it boils down to those two types of films. Raising Arizona, Big Lebowski, The Lady Killers, Burn After Reading; those are farces. No Country, A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo; these are dramas. Sometimes they go broad, sometimes they keep things straight. And to hone their tone, they tend to alternate between the two. Their last movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, was absolutely a drama, so their next one was going to be a comedy. And from this first trailer, they are going broad. They are swinging for the fences with this one. this is a film that will sit next to Intolerably Cruelty and Burn After Reading in terms of the cartoonishness of the film (which, how is it that the Coens are the only directors truly capable of making a live action cartoon?).
Hail, Caesar! is a farce set during the Golden Era of Hollywood, when lavish historical pictures were being made featuring big name actors with ludicrous names, when details of the actors and the productions were under constant scrutiny by a hounding rumour-mill press, and everything was a hair's breath way from ending in ruin, scandal or bankruptcy. Thank gods that period is well past us, right? Personally, I'm looking forward to this because the Coens tend to work very well in period pieces, especially anything with a 30s/40s/50s motif. My favourite of their films is the Hudsucker Proxy, and I see just as much of it in this trailer as I do Burn. But it's the Coens. I'd be excited if it was 90 minutes of a cat licking itself.
The cast is one of the best the Coens have ever assembled (and how is it that the Coens and Wes Anderson are the only ones who can get casts like this together), cobbling old favourites with first timers, including: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Christopher Lambert, David Krumholtz, Fisher Stevens, Clancy Brown and Robert Picardo. The only glaring absence is John Goodman, who must have been too busy over with Trumbo.