I only saw the trailer once, and I didn’t see the movie, but I thought the trailer for the recent White Noise with Michael Keaton was brilliant. I don’t buy into the theory behind the movie, but that 90-second long trailer was creepier than most 90-minute long horror movies. I’m sure it was far better and scarier than the actual movie, too.
I remember being captivated by the trailer for The Life of David Gale, but I was wise enough to wait till that one came out on DVD. Then, I only watched it because I was at my parents’ house and they had Netflixed it.
I thought the previously mentioned Garden State trailer was better than the actual film, which felt like it was composed of interesting shots to use for the trailer.
On a positive note, I thought both the trailer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was swell, as was the film.
Another one I remembered being a great trailer: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Even better because I finally saw the movie tonight, and it did not disappoint.
I remember the teaser trailer for Indy Jones and the Last Crusade.
It had the music, of course and then a shot if Indy riding a horse and his hat blows off.
Then a shot of a director’s chair being put down with Spielberg on it.
Another shot of Indy on the horse with the hat coming off
Then another chair with Lucas on it.
The another shot with Indy on the horse and the hat coming off.
Then a final shot of a chair with Ford on the back.
Then Harrison Ford is seen putting the hat on his head and he puts a staple gun to the brim and he ‘staples’ the hat to his head and says “that ought to do it.”
There is a production called The Best of Sex and Violence which is a collection of B-movie trailers from the early 1970’s. The best of the collection are the ones for the Rudy Ray Moore movies (Dolomite, Disco Godfather, etc.) I have no idea whether the movies are any good, but Mr. Moore’s trailers are hilarious.
I’d say the trailer for Blair Witch was among my favorites. Most recently the Exorcism of Emily Rose trailer impressed me with the same lure-you-in creepiness. Long-time favorites also include all of the LOTR trailers - can’t beat 'em! I love trailers too - fun to watch and a good one will tease you just enough and have the perfect effects, sounds and images.
Well, White Noise won the Golden Fleece at the Golden Trailer Awards. That particular award goes to the trailer that does the best job of making a bad movie appear to be good (although several of its fellow nominees were actual good movies, so hmmm…)
The trailers for The Natural and Greystoke – The Legend of Tarzan of the Apes seemed to be made of the artiest and most beautiful shots from each movie strung together. For some reason they seemed to run forever in the theaters before the films were released, so I got to see them a lot.
I wasn’t that impressed with the trailer for Alien when it first came out – it showed an egg (completely unlike the one in the film) cracking open and a bright l;ight issuing from it. Then you got the advertising tag “In Space…No one Can Hear You Scream”. I hated it.
Terminator II had a great railer. It featured nothing from the movie, but showed a Terminator endoskeleton being put togetrher on an assembly line, then it gets shut in an incubation chamber to have flesh grown in it, and comes out looking like Arnold Schwartzenegger with a glowing eye. Very effective, and gave nothing away (unlike the pre-release publicity, which gave away the key point that Schwartzenegger’s character was a “Good” Terminator.)
The worst trailer was for Cops and Robbers. I swear that they synopsized the whole film in that trailer, including the climactic stunt. Once you saw it there wasn’t any point in seeing the movie.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) was another in the don’t-reveal-anything genre. "If you want to see how this man (Pic of Woody Allen) turned this book (pic of the cover of Reubens’ book) into a movie … you’ll just have to see the movie. "
The Matrix was probably my favorite in a while since it showed me enough to know that I’d enjoy the new special effects and action, but dind’t tell me enough of the story to give away the surprise (and yes, I was surprised unlike a lot of people who scoff at me.)
And SWE1:TPM made me squeal when Darth Maul showed off his double ended dil…er…lightsaber.
I definitely came very close to having an orgasm right there in the theater during that trailer … but I still think the hot-hot double-lightsaber action should have been kept a surprise.
One sure fire way to tell a movie is going to suck - the trailer consists of a bunch of spliced together action scenes that makes it look like a “great fun-filled ride for the whole family”. Usually the theme from Dragonheart is used as the background music.
Ahhh – I remember that! The wording was something like: "You can tell your friends about the beginning (Left third of screen shows scene from start of movie), and you can tell them about the ending (right third shows scene from end), but don’t reveal the surprise middle! (Center third remains blank). “Surprise middle” instead of “surprise ending” was the real joke.
And there was some sense to it – the “surprise middle” was that, despite the fact that this was a “Jeckyll and Hyde” type movie, and the trailer showed Lewis beginning to transform into a hairy monster-like being, the actual “Mr. Hyde” personality was suave, debonaire, and god-looking, with a mixed drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He looked, in fact, a lot like Dean Martin, with whom Lewis had broken up a couple of years earlier.
Someone already beat me to it, but the trailer for Resident Evil: Apocalypse is also my favorite movie trailer to date (even though I thought most of the movie was poorly executed; go figure).
It was well-written, with a very sly tongue-in-cheek style (Regenerate brings dead cells back to life, indeed), looked very much like a high-budget pharmaceutical ad, had that damn RE dog, and used the Umbrella Corporation very naturally in its presentation and narration–the epiphanous moment for RE geeks, but not a giveaway in itself. Then the letter-flipping at the end to the movie title, so the rest of the audience knows what movie “got” them must have piqued the interest of a lot of people, so I imagine it was effective on the “getting people into the theater” sense.
I wish I could remember the name of the director they used for that commercial (he did some movie or another), but really, I wish they’d used him to direct the movie as well…
On a related note, I’m skeptical about how good the actual movie is going to be, but damn if the new Harry Potter trailer doesn’t look amazing.
Who knows how the actual movie will be, but I have to admit that the new trailer for The Transporter 2 is maybe the best trailer I have ever seen in effectiveness and generally making me want to see the movie.
The trailer I linked for Transporter 2 is decidely different than the shorter TV version that I have been seeing. The TV spots are highly effective, this trailer just seems OK.
Did you watch the version I linked? There seem to be several versions.
It starts out slow and quiet, and then just explodes with sound and action for the last ten seconds or so. It does have the weird non-matching egg, though. Could be they hadn’t filmed the egg effect scenes yet when they made the trailer.