Going the cinema with me can be a nightmare. Just ask our movie mogul, Gaz.
I get borderline anxiety from the idea of even missing the first 10 seconds of a film. I need my bum firmly on the seat before the lights have even dimmed. This is the same with TV shows and other forms of media. I have to, HAVE TO, see the whole project from start to finish. If I even miss 2 minutes I don't even bother. Thanks to catch up TV my life is a lot easier now. But thanks to Gaz and his constant care I can do it now. It's taken years and YEARS to get me to the point where I am happy to buy a ticket at 12:46 for the 12:45 showing. Well...I was at that point, however unfortunately due to a snafu at the cinema, I ended up walking into THOR RAGNAROK 3 minutes in, thus setting back all my training and progress of the past 5 years. I was horrified. Why had I listened to everyone? I obviously know best! Now I have to walk out the cinema and wait for the next showing. I expressed my concern to the staff who were shocked too. According to them I should have been able to walk in and get comfy before the film started. What was the reason for this mishap in time? The trailers had accidentally not run.
Due to my almost OCD like qualities of needing to be in the cinema before the lights go down, I have grown to love trailers. We make a big thing of them here at Talk Nerdy. If you listen to the podcast we do a section where we watch and discuss them, and we have a TRAILERS section here on the site where you can go and sift through the lastest snippets of footage of all the upcoming films. Trailers are like the support band to the main act. In fact, before modern day media, you had no choice but to watch trailers. Even in your own home.
Remember VHS? Remember that trailers would play BEFORE THE FUCKING FILM? And you could fast forward them, yes, yet you had to then live with the constant reminder that you've probably just knocked a few years off your videotapes life in the process, and those babies weren't cheap then. It's because of this 'Trailer Culture' I grew up and surrounded myself in, that I really appreciate them and find them fascinating.
Trailers can come in many forms and, as such, people can find them grating more than I find them amazing. This is often due to a marketing and advertising team/campaign that has decided to detach itself away from the creative side of the film. A great example of this is M NIGHT SHAYMALAN'S 2004 film, 'The Village'.
I get borderline anxiety from the idea of even missing the first 10 seconds of a film. I need my bum firmly on the seat before the lights have even dimmed. This is the same with TV shows and other forms of media. I have to, HAVE TO, see the whole project from start to finish. If I even miss 2 minutes I don't even bother. Thanks to catch up TV my life is a lot easier now. But thanks to Gaz and his constant care I can do it now. It's taken years and YEARS to get me to the point where I am happy to buy a ticket at 12:46 for the 12:45 showing. Well...I was at that point, however unfortunately due to a snafu at the cinema, I ended up walking into THOR RAGNAROK 3 minutes in, thus setting back all my training and progress of the past 5 years. I was horrified. Why had I listened to everyone? I obviously know best! Now I have to walk out the cinema and wait for the next showing. I expressed my concern to the staff who were shocked too. According to them I should have been able to walk in and get comfy before the film started. What was the reason for this mishap in time? The trailers had accidentally not run.
Due to my almost OCD like qualities of needing to be in the cinema before the lights go down, I have grown to love trailers. We make a big thing of them here at Talk Nerdy. If you listen to the podcast we do a section where we watch and discuss them, and we have a TRAILERS section here on the site where you can go and sift through the lastest snippets of footage of all the upcoming films. Trailers are like the support band to the main act. In fact, before modern day media, you had no choice but to watch trailers. Even in your own home.
Remember VHS? Remember that trailers would play BEFORE THE FUCKING FILM? And you could fast forward them, yes, yet you had to then live with the constant reminder that you've probably just knocked a few years off your videotapes life in the process, and those babies weren't cheap then. It's because of this 'Trailer Culture' I grew up and surrounded myself in, that I really appreciate them and find them fascinating.
Trailers can come in many forms and, as such, people can find them grating more than I find them amazing. This is often due to a marketing and advertising team/campaign that has decided to detach itself away from the creative side of the film. A great example of this is M NIGHT SHAYMALAN'S 2004 film, 'The Village'.
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'The Village' was the acclaimed director's long awaited follow up to 'SIGNS'. Becoming quickly known for his crazy plot twists and intense, dark, borderline horror tones, to his films. Everyone was quick to the box office after seeing the trailer for 'The Village', and why wouldn't they be? It looked like the director had finally done an actual horror film.
In actual fact the film was more psychological and scenes as gripping as the one's in this like trailer, were barely in it. This upset a lot of people and got the film a bit of a bad reputation, which is a shame because, sans trailer, this is actually a pretty good film. |
Sometimes though, rather than the trailer set the wrong tone, it can tell the wrong story. I know we don't want to know what happens in a film BEFORE we go see a film but does anyone remember how they felt after watching this trailer, and how they felt after walking out the cinema?
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This trailer didn't just give you an idea of the film. It told you what this film was about. Pushed your mind to think in one direction.
I walked in believing I was going to see a classic battle of wits between a formidable baddie and a troubled hero. A simple but effective good vs evil story was what we wanted after seeing all our heroes team up in THE AVENGERS. "And look at how much Iron Man armour is going to be in it", I thought. Fantastic. |
This film was not that though. It was more a story of Tony Stark and how he is more than the armour he wears. And the bad guy? Well, we all know that twist was not exactly well received. Oh and it's a Christmas film.
The sad thing is that this film could have sold itself on the brand alone, yet they thought they needed to SELL it to us. They thought they needed to sell us a villain. They thought they needed to sell us an epic battle. At the time of writing this, it has been YEARS since I have watched this film. I am making my way through the MARVEL films again in preparation for INFINITY WAR and I am curious how I will feel this time around, but I have a feeling in my gut I will love this film for what it is and not for what I was sold.
But why did these two trailers go so off piste? When you think about it, trailers don't have to tell you anything. They just have to make you FEEL. Like any great speech said by any great person, you don't have to remember what they said just how they made you feel. No one did it better in the last few years than STAR WARS!
The sad thing is that this film could have sold itself on the brand alone, yet they thought they needed to SELL it to us. They thought they needed to sell us a villain. They thought they needed to sell us an epic battle. At the time of writing this, it has been YEARS since I have watched this film. I am making my way through the MARVEL films again in preparation for INFINITY WAR and I am curious how I will feel this time around, but I have a feeling in my gut I will love this film for what it is and not for what I was sold.
But why did these two trailers go so off piste? When you think about it, trailers don't have to tell you anything. They just have to make you FEEL. Like any great speech said by any great person, you don't have to remember what they said just how they made you feel. No one did it better in the last few years than STAR WARS!
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This trailer just uses simple imagery to get you to want to watch the film. There's no real details of the plot or what the story is but you want to see it. It got everyone talking about Star Wars again and really got excitement and hype behind its release. This is exactly what trailers should do. Get us talking about a film and promoting it to other people, like this one. It got everyone to be an ambassador for Star Wars, which was sorely needed after the prequels...
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Some trailers start fads. Just like a film plot point or idea can be imitated amongst other films, so can moments in a trailer. If you don't know what I mean, think about a big blue beam of light going into the sky...
Do you remember when loads of trailers had flashing imagery, synced with some form of deep VWOOORRRRPP noise? People blamed Prometheus and Inception a lot for it (again for those that have no idea what I'm on about, just watch the video below).
This was actually a clever editing tool that came from the mind of Ridley Scott's team, yet I'm not talking about Prometheus. In fact this is in a trailer from many moons ago, and instead of the VWOOOORRRPP, you get a piercing siren. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the scariest trailers of all time, 'Alien'.
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How eerie did that make you feel?
This trailer is 40 years old and it runs circles around a LOT of modern trailers now. The tension and horror of this film is perfectly captured, and the thing is, we all know how that film goes! Imagine back then! They only had this to go off of. I can only dream of many pairs of pants needed changing in the cinema that day after this was broadcast. |
It probably would have ruined the film I'd gone to see as I would spend the entire running time thinking about 'Alien'. Easily one of the best films, and with it, one of the best trailers. With that in mind, I take you to the other side of that coin...
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Yeah. This actually happened.
I don't know who came up with it, I don't know who approved it and I don't know who paid out for it. But whoever these people were, their horrifically dumb imprint is now scarred into reels of film forever. How did this make you feel? I didn't say this would be a happy journey, did I? But I thought this was important to watch. The power of a trailer in its worst form is captured pretty perfectly here. Lest we forget. |
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It's amazing how those two minutes of footage make you wince, grit your teeth and get mildly angry over how they're treating a property you have a nostalgic soft spot for. This is why I love trailers though, and also why I get concerned that such an artistic medium is in the hands of corporate giants. What is a trailer at its bare bones other than an advertisement? Remember, that two minutes of footage is meant to get some more bums on the seat in the cinema. Sometimes in order to do that, you have to pretend the film is a different film.
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In a similar tone to my IRON MAN 3 stanza, this trailer sold me what looked to be a perfect Godzilla film. We would have amazing effects. The gargantuan monster wouldn't be shrunken down, he'd be retaining his 'GOD'-like status. You had fantastic actors in it like Bryan Cranston. And a deeper underlying story of shady government dealings and environmental messages. That was NOT what we got.
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I'm not going to spoil the film if you haven't seen it. Just know that this film got me so annoyed in the cinema I had to LITERALLY sit on my hands. I yelled out "OH, COME ON!" a few times too. I couldn't help it. That trailer and that film are too entirely different entities. I felt betrayed by my big, scaly God. But I know why they did it. The film is bad, and that's what these big Hollywood companies will do to get you to come see their flop of a film. They will lie. They will take advantage of how a trailer can make you FEEL and manipulate those feelings into making you want to sit in the cinema. This trailer and film combination is what has made me the cynical movie goer that I am today. Yes, if you listen to our TALK NERDY podcast, I do often still get excited by trailers but I often back that excitement up by saying that the excitement I feel is for the trailer. Not the film. Because what we see in the trailer might not be in the film.
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Both of these films suffered heavy criticism because many scenes in the trailers were not in the final product. Is that right though? Is that the very definition of mis-selling a product? Or were they just flexing their artistic muscles in order to get the trailer to make us FEEL, like I mentioned earlier? After all, some trailers have moments that aren't in the film and we're not bothered.
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To the left we have Spider-Man. This uses a few shots of Iron Man and Spider-Man together but these didn't feature in the film. And to the right, DEADPOOL 2. A trailer that is essentially roasting other trailers, along with itself with hardly ANY footage from the film in. The reason these two get away with it though is that neither use their footage to deviate away from the plot of the film. They're just there to convey what the film is going to make you feel. STAR WARS and JUSTICE LEAGUE played God and tried to tell us a story that isn't in the final film.
I could also mention when trailers give away the film entirely but I could be here days and also ruin a LOAD of films for people who may not have seen trailer nor film yet. The point of this blog though was not to shit all over trailers, it was to show that they're a fine art form that I really appreciate and you should too. With that being said, I will leave you with two of my favourite trailers I have seen in recent memory. One nearly makes me cry every time. The other makes me jump out of my seat in excitement and rock out. Trailer perfection. Enjoy.
I could also mention when trailers give away the film entirely but I could be here days and also ruin a LOAD of films for people who may not have seen trailer nor film yet. The point of this blog though was not to shit all over trailers, it was to show that they're a fine art form that I really appreciate and you should too. With that being said, I will leave you with two of my favourite trailers I have seen in recent memory. One nearly makes me cry every time. The other makes me jump out of my seat in excitement and rock out. Trailer perfection. Enjoy.
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Did I forget any? What's your favourite trailer and why? Hit me up by tweeting us @TalkNerdyUK
By Jay Burdett
Twitter - @ProJub
By Jay Burdett
Twitter - @ProJub