Trailer Tuesday retro edition: the best trailers ever
Cinemas are closed, films are postponed – and so are trailers. Tough times for movie buffs. But here’s something to cheer you up: my all-time favourite movie trailers.
All cinemas are closed. This also means all new movies that were about to hit the cinemas are postponed and Hollywood is holding back with new trailers. That’s why I’ve decided to give you the best trailers in movie history in this weeks edition of Trailer Tuesday.
Alien
The emptiness of space. A planet. Silence. People walking through a futuristically worn-down corridor. That’s when the drums appear – they must have been there all along. A shrilling siren. Uncomfortable and intense. Like a human screaming. It gets loud. Suddenly it gets very loud. There’s fear. Horror. Death. Then silence.
In space, nobody can hear you scream.
It’s a trailer that embodies what makes this movie so special: it conveys this oppressive fear. Not by what you see, but by what you don’t. We know very well that something evil is lurking in the shadow of the spaceship. And by the time we get to see the monster – the alien – for the first time, we’ve died a thousand deaths inside.
Release date: 25 May 1979
Jurassic Park
14 minutes of scenes with dinosaurs. Only four minutes of computer-animated dinosaurs. In 1993, Steven Spielberg's «Jurassic Park» made film history by showing four minutes in which real people interact with photorealistically animated dinosaurs. Something the world had never seen before.
But computers of that time had lousy computing power – the four minutes of dinosaurs took ILM an entire year to process. The movie needed a trailer, but not a single second of computer-animated material was available at that moment. So the makers were forced to get creative. The result? The actual trailer became a prologue to the movie, which explains the setting: scientists find dinosaur blood that has survived for millions of years in mosquitoes trapped in amber. They use this blood to breed real dinosaurs, which they exhibit in a park: Jurassic Park.
The rest is history. Or rather: a trailer without cheap showmanship. Without actors. Without CGI. That would be unthinkable today. But back then, necessity became a virtue – and created one of the best trailers of all time.
Release date: 11 June 1993
Cloverfield
I remember watching the first «Transformers» movie in the cinema with my buddies. When we left the cinema, we weren’t talking about «Transformers», but the trailer to «Cloverfield», which was shown before the main movie.
And we weren’t the only ones. For months, the internet speculated about what this Cloverfield monster could be that hurled the head of the Statue of Liberty across Manhattan in the trailer. If that’s not a sign of a great trailer, then I don't know what else would be.
Release date: 17 January 2008
Godzilla
Melancholy. Apocalyptic. With a touch of horror. Whatever made «Godzilla» so special in 2014 – it wasn’t its trailer. That’s exactly why the «Halo Jump» trailer is so iconic. After Roland Emmerich's 1998 fiasco, Godzilla was considered a dead franchise in Hollywood circles. The trailer changed that.
What I find especially thrilling: Ligeti's requiem as background music. The perfect underscore for San Francisco’s descent into hell – an almost unendurably tense scene.
Release date: 16 May 2014
Guardians of the Galaxy
It’s 2014 and nobody knows «Guardians of the Galaxy». May a few die-hard comic book fans. But everyone else? When Marvel released the first «Iron Man» movie in 2008, people were talking about Marvel's B-league. Later, «Thor» and «Captain America» followed. In comparison, the «Guardians» were at most the third-degree cousins of the D-league.
Imagine that’s the movie you’re hired to produce a trailer for. You get a two-minute chance at making a great first impression and making people want to watch the full movie – a movie with Which talking raccoons in space, which keep peaceful trees as pets. How would you do that?
Whoever made this trailer, you have my respect. Especially for the idea to include Blue Swedes «Hooked on a Feeling» in the trailer. All that’s left to say is: OOGA CHAKA!
Release date: 30 July 2014
What about you: what’s your favourite trailer and why? Let me know by commenting below. I’d like to know.
I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.»