IFC’s Greatest Movie Trailers of all time
It’s easy to dismiss film trailers as a simple marketing tool, something to entice bodies into the theatre but easily forgotten once the actual film has arrived. Not true in my book! Trailers are an art form in many ways. I still enjoy watching trailers to films I’ve seen dozens of times. I’m often taken back to the moment in time when I first saw it – the excitement, the suspense, the shared thrills with other people in the audience, they’re all recreated for 2 minutes or so. For those 2 minutes, I’m once again unspoiled.
As such, I was interested in IFC’s 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time. Any time you make a list like that you’re opening up a Pandora’s Box of nerdy arguments (especially in the internet age). Of course, that’s at least half the point of making such a list in the first place, so no surprises there. And no surprise that I agree with roughly half of these, while the other half leave me raising an eyebrow or two in Spockian fashion. So I thought I’d share a few of the shared choices with additional commentary as to why I think they’re great, and a few I think deserved to be on there but were excluded.
IFC’s # 10 THE SHINING
This is unquestionably one of the most unsettling films of all time, and the trailer certainly matches the unnerving nature of the film with equal glee. It focuses on what has probably become the most famous image from Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel – that of the blood ocean emerging from the Overlook’s hotel shaft. The trailer actually builds for a full minute before the bloody reveal, but puts you ill at ease with creepy synth noises and the sound of muffled voices. They simply don’t make horror soundtracks like this any more. And IFC rightfully points out that Roland Emmerich (he of Godzilla & Independence Day) totally ripped it off for his new disaster/end of the world/yawnfest, 2012.
IFC’s # 3 CLOVERFIELD
The trailer for Cloverfield does exactly what a trailer should do – it’s full of teases, hints and glimpses, but never fully gives away the game. It also operates on a bit of a bait-and-switch. When I first saw this, I was positive it would be another angst-ridden romantic romp, a la ‘Garden State’. Then upon the first sounds of the roar, I thought maybe it would be about a terrorist attack. Then they all run to the roof, and I could hear that roar up close and personal – whaaaaa? The frenzied descent down the stairway, with the cuts in sound/visuals was truly intense, and by the time we reach the street I was in. Another eerie moan, and yes, someTHING throws (or spits) the head from the Statue of Liberty into the street. HOLY SHIT. You didn’t even need a title. Internet debates about scale would arise almost instantly afterward, but we’d all been lured in.
IFC’s #1 ALIEN
Anyone who reads the site knows I’m a fan of this franchise (through the 3rd installment, anyway), but here we have the first encounter between Lt Ripley and those acid-bleeding sonsabitches. The trailer is seeping with dread, and is another excellent showcase for an effective use of sound. There’s no dialog here, and for the first 50 seconds or so there’s simply a quiet, eerie whistle accompanied by a faint beat. Then comes :51, the egg cracks, and you jump into the chair next to you (or the lap next to you, depending on your circumstance). That awful, alien wail starts to ring out, and that faint tapping begins to echo your own heartbeat as images of running fill the screen. We hit the climax at 1:35 with rapid cuts of Ash the android losing it, a facehugger bursting out of its hiding place, Ripley’s cat hissing and Yaphet Kotto meeting his grisly end. Then the genius tagline: In space, no one can hear you scream. I think I just peed a little.
IFC’s #46 WATCHMEN
The trailer for Watchmen is a perfect example of why some people hate movie trailers – sometimes they promise far more excitement and sophistication than the move in question ends up delivering. If only the aesthetic sensibility present in the trailer had carried over into the actual movie. I’d have loved to have seen The Smashing Pumpkins’ creepy ‘The Beginning is the End is the Beginning’ in the movie itself, especially in light of the obnoxious song choices that ended up in the final cut. Billy Corgan’s ode to the Batman of another era gives the trailer an otherwordly feeling that the film sadly lacked. It’s a testament to the talents of whoever edited this, as they took a schlocky, uneven movie and for 2 minutes made it appear like the greatest accomplishment you’d ever see on the silver screen. Poor Billy though, his weird little song is now associated with 2 stinky comic book adaptations, decades apart.
IFC’s #19 UNBREAKABLE
Forget Watchmen, Spiderman or X-Men. This is the best comic book movie ever made (excluding The Dark Knight, which I don’t really consider a comic book movie). Putting that argument aside, this is a really great trailer. It’s essentially one brief scene from the movie. The pacing is nearly at a crawl, especially in comparison the usual WHISH-BANG-POW-ZOOM-CUT editing of a typical movie trailer. It makes you feel uneasy and uncertain. Why did Bruce Willis survive a train wreck? Why is everyone whispering? What’s wrong with Sam Jackson’s hair? And again, there’s a smart use of sudden, urgent sounds – the train crash, the shattered glass, the camera flashes. You knew you were in for something unusual.
GREAT TRAILERS IFC FORGOT TO INCLUDE:
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Another Kubrick picture, but he’s kind of unavoidable, isn’t he? I’m sure IFC was worried about stacking the deck (though why they included Eyes Wide Shut and not this or 2001 is a little baffling). This trailer works because it doesn’t tell you anything with it’s fast-paced edits and Monty Pythonesque animations. You have no idea how you’re supposed to feel about it, and that’s perfect because it’s more or less how you’re meant to feel about the movie itself. It’s a completely uneven keel, with flashes of comedy interspersed with extreme violence. This is the sort of thing you could get away with in 1971 that you never could now. Most modern movie studios would be absolutely petrified to release a trailer that doesn’t tell an audience exactly what to expect. And that alone solidifies its classic status.
THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY
I don’t believe that anyone could watch this trailer and not want to see this movie. That two note motif from Ennio Morricone’s brilliant film score immediately hits you in the face right off the bat, and then you have Eastwood’s defiant scowl as he lights the cannon, the subsequent barrage of cannon fire, the yodel (yes yodel) as we first see Eli Wallach hanging in his noose, and the classic voiceover: “The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.” These images have become some iconic that they’re usually right what our brain goes for when conjuring up images of the old west, but it’s easy to forget that at the time the Western was in something of a decline. It took an Italian to resuscitate a quintessentially American genre. It’s also important to note that this trailer actually uses the movie’s soundtrack, which is rather unusual these days. There are entire companies out there that exist solely to soundtrack movie trailers. But The Good, The Band & The Ugly trailer uses Morricone’s score to full effect. This is the trailer that all summer blockbuster trailers wish to emulate.
BARBARELLA
This trailer opens with Jane Fonda stripping. Need I say more? When you see a slow pan of Megan Fox’s fleshy bits in a Transformers trailer, you have Barbarella to thank for it.
REALLY AWFUL MOVIE TRAILERS
2012
I mentioned Roland Emmerich earlier in this post, as well as his latest, 2012. The teaser trailer managed a little creepiness, even though I’m really burned out on these end of the world epics. But this full trailer is a massive WTF moment. It’s crappy but alright until roughly 1:04, at which point it completes the flush and quickly circles the drain. I’m not sure if a different editor took over at that point, or if they let Michael Bay in the mixing booth, but the music that kicks in at that stage is absolutely laughable and totally out of sync with the emotion they’re trying to convey. I spoke of the brilliant use of sound in the Alien & Shining trailers – just imagine if, instead of the disturbing synth sounds that were used, the scene of blood pouring out the elevator was instead accompanied by the Benny Hill sax. That’s basically what happens here. I wouldn’t even put this mess at the bottom of my Netflix queue.
Tags: a clockwork orange, alien, barbarella, movie trailers, Movies & TV, the shining, unbreakable, watchmen
