Most people like trailers. That’s a given. But occasionally there is a trailer that just blows my mind, that resonates with me immensely, that I can watch over and over and over again.
I’m a trailer hound. I visit the apple.com and dark horizons and comingsoon trailer sites often, so I’ve usually seen all trailers that are out there.
I like special effects and the “wow” factor. But one thing I’ve noticed is that the music in a trailer has an inordinate affect on me, and can raise the trailer from good to great. Not that that’s the only factor, of course.
Anyway, I realized that I have some absolute all-time favorite trailers.
Last year, it was Garden State. Fun, interesting trailer. Great humor, great mood. And perfect music to go with it.
This year the best trailer I’ve seen is Everything Is Illuminated. Guess what? Funny (well, for the first half), but with a great mood. And some exquisite songs to go with it.
So what are some of your absolute favorites, and why?
Though I didn’t much care for the film, I’ve always liked the trailer for **Cliffhanger**–no narration, no major spoilers, just music and action cut to make the film appear better than it actually was (which is, of course, the point of a trailer).
The first trailer that comes to mind as being outstanding is the one for “Magnolia.” It even contains shots that were specifically filmed just for use in the trailer, namely the head shots of the different actors introducing themselves by their character name.
The recent “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” had a fantastic trailer.
There were many TV trailers for “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, and one of them in particular was just excellent. I don’t know this trailer had a specific name to it, but it was much darker than the others.
I love trailers, but one recently was just too good.
My friends and I have been ‘Sin City’ fans for a long, long time, and when the movie cast was announced, we assumed it was just some internet joke- the casting, to us, was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
We heard nothing more for a few months.
One day my friend R, who first told me about the movie, is over, and I download the trailer for her. She just stand, staring, wide-eyed as it plays. When it ends, I give her a grin, “So, what do you think?”
She let out a little gasp, “I think I just came a little.”
Sin City
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Dark City
L.A. Confidential
The Matrix
Equilibrium
Casshern (recent Japanese movie that I still haven’t seen yet)
I’m a big geek when it comes to film noir, and anything remotely stylized with a noir/cyberpunk/steampunk/comic book look and feel to it. Suits, flapping trench coats, fedoras, femme fatales, nightmarish cityscapes, robots, ninjas, robot ninjas, swordfights, gunfights… that’s enough to engage my “wow factor.”
Also airships. I am very fond of airships in noir/steampunk sort of stories, and I love seeing them in trailers.
Occasionally I’ll see an awesome trailer, and the movie turns out horrible. This was the case with Van Helsing and The Avengers. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone made it seem (although it wasn’t great), but I thought the trailer was outstanding.
I thought the trailer for Star Wars: Episode One was pretty good.
I’m also fond of a couple of the Episode III trailers, mainly the one with Obi-Wan’s speech (circa A New Hope) to Luke about the Jedi Knights, with the clip of Qui-Gon from Episode One (which looked to me like it had been played with to make the colors match between the Ep1 footage and the EpIV footage), and the one that has a dramatic rendition of Luke Skywalker’s theme playing whilst we see clips of space battles and light saber duels and such.
I thought the second and third Lord of the Rings movies had great trailers. Don’t remember the trailer for the first one, probably because the trailers for the second two hit after I was already primed for LotR movies. With these, a big part was the music and clips of majestic fight scenes.
Wing Commander IV had a great set of trailers, even if it wasn’t a real movie in the traditional sense
Star Trek II also had an excellent trailer, which was also wonderfully misleading and cheezy.
Chronicles of Riddick, I think, also had an excellent trailer, what with the imagry and Dame Judy Dench narrating.
Boondock Saints also has an excellent trailer, one which had me ROFL when the music broke out into Bethoven’s 9th Symphony.
Oh, and the trailer for Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which also doubled as a commercial for the Umbrella corporation (I really wish they had shown that during soap operas. That woulda rocked.)
That’s one of my favorites, too. I love trailers. I cannot put in a DVD and not watch the trailer first. There are some trailers that take all the good parts and condense them so you don’t even really have to watch the movie itself–Feeling Minnesota is an excellent example of this (with the added bonus of “Ring of Fire” as the music).
I very much love trailers that fake you out a little, too. Most recently was the trailer for Red Eye, which starts out looking all cute and rom-com, and then turns bad.
My personal absolute top trailer, however, is the teaser trailer for Sleepaway Camp III, which can be found on the DVD for SCII. There, big as life, in the Extras menu, it says “Teaser Trailer.” The trailer itself is … the blood-dripping logo … and then it’s over. It makes me laugh every time I watch it, because it’s sixteen seconds of logo, and then right back to the menu. There’s really just no explaining why I get such a kick out of it.
And I’m drawing a complete blank on my other favorites, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back later with a few.
The first trailer for “Hitchhiker’s Guide” (with “What a Wonderful World” and the Earth exploding) was particularly effective. I also vividly remember seeing the first trailer for Kubrick’s “The Shining” (the blood pouring out of the elevator) as well as my diasppointment when I saw the actual film. I once had a collection of great “B” movie trailers called “The Best of Sex and Violence”. It was narrated by John Carradine and contained such classics as “Bury Me an Angel” and “I Spit on your Grave”. Don’t know if it’s still available, but, if it is, it’s well worth the investment.
My favorite was The Two Towers, which was shown at the end of Fellowship of the Ring late in its run. I was so excited that TTT would keep the same quality, since I loved FOTR so much. I buzzing about that for days.
Conversely, I was bitterly disappointed that a Return of the King trailer didn’t follow TTT during its run.
I love the Lord of the Rings trailers. I did especially like the trailer for “Fellowship of the Ring” (the teaser was good, but the full one was better).
I also loved the full trailer for Kill Bill Vol. 2. I really liked the use of the music from “Good, Bad, and the Ugly” in it (Ennio Morricone). Especially late in the trailer when bits from several scenes were placed there right on the accents in the music (shotgun blast through door, kicking door shut, nail driving into coffin lid, etc).
I check out the page of trailers on apple.com regularly, too. Always a good place to see what’s coming up.
