Friday, November 13, 2009

When Your Life Is No Longer Your Own

Movie trailers used to be cool. Most would tease you with a taste, trying to entice you to come see what the heck that was going to be. Nowadays because market research apparently informed studios that showing viewers everything gets a better turnout, most trailers leave little to the imagination. As in, mass audiences prefer knowing what they're in for even if the trailer shows parts of the last reel, and thus today we tend to get a synopsis of a movie instead.

So in tribute to the then and now, Friday Fun is a few of my favourite 'just a taste' trailers...






And the original theatrical trailer for ALIEN here.

"I'm screaming but no one can hear me!!!!!"


And a few of my favourite "show everything including some of the plot but it still looks so awesome I need to see it' trailers:







Whoa.


Because they make me smile.

4 comments:

Luke Annand said...

Yeah, a lot of trailers do seem to be just the CliffNotes version of the films themselves, but there are some good newer ones out there.

Check out the trailer for A SERIOUS MAN and the first UP IN THE AIR trailer. The former for building up tension incredibly well, the latter for both telling you nothing and everything about the film.

Your Girl Jimmy said...

Good call on the Shining teaser. I love the sound they used in this teaser. Even though you don't know what the movie is about, the sound and the bizarre images are scary as shit.

jimhenshaw said...

I had just finished reading "The Shining" when I heard the movie was coming out and wondered how Kubrick would be able to get what was in the book on film.

When I saw the trailer I realized he was going somewhere else entirely -- and the possibilities scared the shit out of me.

I think that's the difference between some of the classic stuff and recent trailers. The older stuff actually teased you. Stuff like "2010" and "Transformers" is just grovelling in the hope of scaring up some ticket money.

wcdixon said...

Or 2012, Jim. The trailer for 2010 was actually a pretty trippy.