It sucks, but I can’t put my finger on why it sucks. I’m really only able to compare it to trailers from the past 15-20 years, and I really don’t have any recollection of actual trailers from 15+ years ago, but this just seems really choppy and cheesy.
Can anyone articulate why this trailer seems so bad? Was this a low-budget trailer, or was this typical of the mid-70s? I feel like your average modern-day 16-year-old could put together a more effective trailer on a cheap laptop.
Lucas had to scrounge to get the money to finish this movie. While it may not have been the most expensive ever made at that point, it still cost more than Fox was really wanted to spend on a cross between Flash Gordon, Seven Samurai and old WWII dogfight pictures. It’s no wonder the trailer looks like it was put together in somebody’s bathtub.
There’s no continuity between the scenes, like there is in the better-made modern trailers. A good trailer pretty much serves as an introduction to the movie you want to see - think of the blurb paragraph on the back of a book. Would that be effective if it consisted of a few choice lines from the book that don’t really connect to one another?
Also, way too much blank space in too many of the frames, between the starship shots and the “STAR WARS” title approaching. Doesn’t catch the eye at all.
I can’t remember if I saw this trailer when it was in theaters (I was seven), but I can’t see myself getting interested in it based on the trailer. It does suffer from missing the Williams score, and the editors of the trailer do a horrible job of telling what the movie’s really about.
I was eight years old in 1977, when the movie was released, and had absolutely no interest in seeing the movie. I remember my mom talked my dad into taking the family to see it in June 1977, a few weeks after it had opened. As was the case with most kids of that era, “Star Wars” and the resulting pop culture ended up consuming my every waking thought for the next half decade.
It has been; I know I’ve seen it several times online in the past few years.
I agree with the earlier comments (choppy editing, not doing a particularly good job of teasing the actual story). My guess is that they used shots which were finished with editing / FX at the time when they needed to put the trailer together.
It also just seems slowly-paced in general. It might be because they were padding out the actual movie clips with that slowly-creeping logo, but it just seems very slow by modern standards (and maybe even by the standards of that era).
Looking at it at work with no sound, I’d say it’s the combination of that overly long slow approach of the words “Star Wars” (when you can’t even read it most of the time, so I was thinking “What the fuck is that and why are they boring me with something I can’t even make out” for far too long) and the rough edges to the bits they do show - poor lighting, incomplete effects shots, etc.
It’s a compilation of the most banal dialogue and shots that can be extracted from the film, before final score or fx or even ADR, edited together by someone who had skimmed an early script and some production notes.
"Somewhere in space, this could all be happening right now, a long time ago - in a galaxy far far away this was a billion years in the making by the guy that brought you american grafitti’.
I don’t even remember seeing the trailer in a theater, nor had I heard of Star Wars before it came out. My uncle and I were cruising around in Las Vegas and we saw it advertised at a theater, so we figured what the hell and went in to see it (it had just opened at the Red Rock…first showing of the first day). The theater was pretty empty, almost no one was there for the opening. I was blown away (I was 17 at the time). The next week I recall we were going to see it again and the line was out of the building.
Tells you how good the trailer was I guess, and how good the advertising for the movie was pre-release.
I can’t watch it without thinking of the Family Guy parody, especially when Obi-Wan “unsheaths” his light sabre. :rolleyes:
I also like the “Red Alert” signal at the end, taken directly from the first Star Trek pilot.
Still, it does recapture (for me, anyway) a lot of the appeal of the first movie, before Lucas fucked everything up. (“The story of a boy … a girl … romance … incest …”)
My favorite line: “It’s an epic of heroes…” Luke shoots and a stormtrooper falls over with a thud. Who’s the hero – the guy who shot some random dude or the guy who faceplants on a balcony?
I was only 12 in 1977 (do the math on my screen name ), and I doubt that I’d seen the trailer before it came out. However, I do remember seeing TV ads, particularly featuring the scene of C-3PO introducing himself and R2-D2 to Luke in the garage at the Lars farm.
But, what I really remember are the news stories about the phenomenon that it quickly became, with huge lines at the theaters. That’s what convinced my cousin and me that we needed to see this movie. We convinced my aunt (his mom) to take us to a weekday matinee, and told her, “people are lining up to see this movie! We have to go early to make sure we can get in!!!” Well, yeah, big lines in Los Angeles and New York on the weekends; not so much in Green Bay, WI, on a Tuesday afternoon. We got there 60 or 90 minutes early; not only were we the first ones there, but the box office wasn’t even open yet, and it was nowhere near a sell-out.
), and I doubt that I’d seen the trailer before it came out. However, I do remember seeing TV ads, particularly featuring the scene of C-3PO introducing himself and R2-D2 to Luke in the garage at the Lars farm.