September 16, 2024 • 19 mins
What makes a good movie trailer? What are some of the horrible clichés that run the modern movie trailer? Discussing all things movie trailers on this episode of Film Real!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This production is brought to you by the Recess Bell Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How are you doing guys?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's me Justin Greenberg, the guy who hosts this show
that I don't know if anyone's even listening to, but
I love doing it. It's Film Reel right here on
the Recess Bell Network, and today I'm gonna be talking
about movie trailers. Now, the beauty of this show is
it's my personal stories. If you want to learn the
(00:33):
history of movie trailers, I know they've been around for
well over one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm not gonna know that stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
But the reason why I love doing this show is
because it's, you know, essentially my childhood, my growing up,
and my history with movies. So that's what this episode's
gonna be about. We're gonna talk about the positives of
movie trailers, the negatives of movie trailers, some of my
all time favorites, and some of the cliches that I
(00:59):
just absolutely hate that go along with seemingly every single
movie trailer these days.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So let's get into it right now here we go,
we're starting. Did I hit recording? Yep, it's recording.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Let's start off with the positives of movie trailers. I
actually think there's a lot more negatives or trailers than
there are positives, But to me, they are the selling point.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
They are a.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Quick gauge into seeing if an audience is interested in
a movie. And especially when you go to the movies
and you're watching it with an audience, you could tell
if a movie is going to have a certain buzz
around it based off of the trailer, whether it's the
murmuring after the trailer ends, oh, I got to see that,
you'll hear someone in the background. I vividly remember seeing
(02:10):
the movie Spawn in movie theaters and there was a
trailer for Alient Resurrection and a guy in the back
of the audience.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Said, I can't wait to see that one.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
In a sarcastic tone, and the whole audience was dying laughing.
And I think that, you know, that was true with
what the actual movie was. It was a terrible movie.
It didn't do good and and that trailer didn't do
a good selling point to you know, get audiences invested
into the movie. Sometimes there's just a certain buzz around
(02:42):
a trailer, you know. For me, the teaser trailer is
something I'm actually into more than the actual trailer. I
feel like you know, a full length trailer. People that
don't know what the fuck a trailer is, I guess
you should explain. It's the preview before the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The previews. You know, you're watching the previous.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
If you don't know what a trailer is and you're
watching or listening to me talk about movies, she probably
stopped listening to the podcast at this point. I'm not
gonna baby this yar trailer. You know what a trailer.
I'm not talking about a trailer that's you know, in
the back of a truck, movie previews trailers, I think
the teaser trailer, which is usually like a thirty second thing.
To me, that's that's what really gets me hooked in
(03:20):
because it's more mysterious. You're not seeing so much. And
again we're gonna get to some of the negatives of
trailers later on, and you know, one of those is
showing too much of what the movie is. But the
teaser trailer, that's where your intrigue really starts. When I
was a kid, I actually loved the previews. I remember
there were shows actually on TV, you know, pre internet,
(03:41):
that would just show movie previews. When you rented a
movie coming soon to a theater near you, you know,
that would play before each movie, and we loved it.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Coming soon to theaters, coming, coming, coming, We loved it
as a kid.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
One of the earlier episodes on this podcast, I was
talking about the movie Mortal Kombat, and when me and
my brother rented Dumb and Dumber, they showed a teaser
trailer for Mortal Kombat and we rewound that thing forty
or fifty times, just watching it over and over again.
Now with the Internet, that's where people get their teaser trailers.
On the last episode of Film Reel, we were talking
about physical media and how no major studios are actually
(04:20):
releasing physical media, so you're not gonna get those trailers
prior to the movies because they're not being released. And
Netflix and other streaming services don't have you previews before
the movies. I wonder if that's something they'll eventually implement,
But if you're going to see your trailers these days,
it's usually on the Internet. That's where you get your
first experience with it. And again, I don't like that,
(04:41):
that's one of the negatives. I like being introduced to
the movie preview before an actual movie, so I try
and avoid all trailers until I actually am seeing it
on the big screen. I loved the surprise of a
trailer when, especially when I was younger, that's I hate
to be this old guy. Oh it's so much better
(05:03):
back in my day, But it just was. It really was,
and you're not surprised by pretty much anything these days.
You know, let's just use Marvel for example. They've mapped
out the next ten years of Marvel movies, so you
know what's coming next. Unless you're living under a rock
and avoiding all social media. You know they're making a
(05:25):
Fantastic four. You know they're making you know, another Avengers
movie down the line. But when you were younger and
the internet really wasn't a thing, those movie previews were
the introduction, the the hey we're making a new Batman movie.
Hey they're making a Spawn movie, and that's lost. Let's
(05:48):
get into the negatives because there's I feel like there's
a lot more negatives when it comes to modern movie trailers.
If you go back to like the seventies, trailers were terrible.
They really were terrible. The initial Star Wars trailer was
a laugh joke. Everyone saw that trailer and thought this
movie was going to be horrendous Star Wars a billion
years in the making, and it's coming to your galaxy
(06:11):
this summer. That's coming. I really think they start to
perfect the trailer in the nineties and actually into the
early two thousands. That's when they become really cinematic, and
a lot of the times the trailers were significantly better
than the actual movie. And that's one of the negatives.
(06:32):
And another big negative is a lot of these trailers.
And you hear this cliche all the time, but it
is so true. These movie trailers show way too much.
You get all the big jokes when it comes to
a comedy, you get all the big scares when it
comes to a horror movie. It also spoils certain things.
So let's just go back to an example that I
(06:54):
want to bring up. The last Star Wars movie to
come out, Episode nine, an awful movie. But in the
trailer for this movie, they showed a lot of scenes
with Chewbacca with other characters, and around a third way
through the movie, you're supposed to believe that Chewbacca dies.
But I'm sitting there in the theater and I'm going
(07:14):
I saw the trailer. There's several scenes that weren't there,
so we know he's going to show back up because
I saw him interact with so and so. I saw
him interact there, and we haven't gotten those scenes, just
so you just gave that away. I think the worst
example of a trailer spoiling things is the movie Castaway,
(07:36):
which is such.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
A good movie.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Tom Hanks. He's trapped on an island. Will he get
off the Oh yeah, he will get off the island,
because the trailer shows him getting off the island.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We were launched for four years. We had a funeral coffin.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
What was in it that I cannot believe that they
would allow that. Now, a lot of directors don't really
even have say as to what goes into the trailer.
That's the studios call. But you think somebody like Robert
SimK is a guy who made Back to the Future,
who framed Roger Rabbit Forrest Gump, would have some say.
So I'm curious as to how he would allow such
(08:17):
a monumental moment in the movie get released in the trailer.
Absolutely embarrassing. There's a couple of cliches that I've noticed,
and I want you guys to notice next time you
go to the movies, because they're pretty much there'll you're
guaranteed to see it now if Hollywood decides to ever
make a comedy again, because that's just something that they
(08:39):
don't do anymore. You'll notice one trend. There'll be music
playing throughout the trailer. Then to accentuate the joke, they
will stop the music, and that's the cue for the
audience to laugh along. It's sort of like when you're
watching a sitcom and they have the laugh tracks. It's
to get the sheep to go, yeah, yeah, that's supposed
(09:04):
to be funny. Hey, I'm calling about the ad for
healthy girls with good sat scores.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
She could take your clothes off in there. I don't
know if it's even legal.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Another cliche, which I think is something that's far more
recent than the stopping of the music for comedy, it's
this taking a classic song and then having a slowed
down version of it. I don't know why they think
this is so epic. They'll take the dumbest song.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
The Wilds on the busco.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Down and now they haven't used that song, but I
wouldn't be shocked if they do that.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I'm incapable of leaving you alone.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Duff had a rough start in life, you should steer
clear for me healthy every time you go to the
movies and you're watching at least five or six trailers.
One of those previous we'll have some song from the sixties, seventies, eighties,
and they'll do a remixed version of it slowed down
(10:07):
to be epic. Music is so important to not just
the actual movie, but the trailer, and that anytime that happens,
I roll my eyes and go ugh, we're doing that
cliche again. How about some of the best Let's again
way too much negative. Let's talk about some of the
best movie trailers. Let's start with one that was a
(10:29):
bad movie, because that's something that could happen. That's always
so fascinating. Sometimes really good movies have bad trailers, likely
we talked about with Star Wars, and then sometimes it's
vice versa.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
There there's a trailer that's so good.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And you're like, this movie can't be bad, and then
it ends up being crappy. One of those that stands
out for me is Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.
I thought this was gonna be freaking fantastic. The special
effects were great, didn't reveal too much about the plot.
We're getting a new Apes movie after thirty something years.
And then the movie actually started and it was horrendous,
(11:04):
but a fantastic, well put together trailer. One that I
was so interested in was Cloverfield. I didn't really care
for the movie, but that initial teaser trailer there was
so much buzz. I'm telling you everyone on the internet
was talking about this preview because there was so little
(11:26):
information about it. Nobody really knew what it was going
to be. And I remember people online trying to decipher
what the people in the trailer were actually saying.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
There is that a lion?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I remember people thinking as there were a giant lion
and ended up being a random monster. But other people
thought it was a Godzilla movie. They thought this was
some secret Godzilla movie that was being made. And there
was such a fantastic buzz around that trailer. Speaking of buzz,
the marketing, the whole marketing around the Blair Witch project
(11:55):
absolutely brilliant, and those trailers made it seem like what
we were watching was a documentary. And again, you would
lose that in twenty twenty four when I'm recording this podcast,
something like that would be debunked right away.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You'd have a Facebook page of the actors.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You'd have a Twitter account, they'd have a TikTok, you'd
know that these were actors. Somehow, some way that would
be revealed. But back in nineteen ninety nine, when the
Internet that we know is in its infancy, that marketing
buzz that was really like the first movie to really
use the Internet to its advantage. A majority of the
(12:35):
people had no idea what we were watching. Is this
a documentary? And I know the movie is very divisive,
I love it, but the trailer, there's no denying that
that buzz surrounding the movie all because of the trailer
sold that film and it became one of the most
profitable movies of all time, simply, I think based off
(12:57):
of its marketing. You want to talk about marketing everywhere.
Godzilla from the year before nineteen ninety eight. The buzz
for this movie started the year prior when Jurassic Park
two The Lost World was in theaters, and before that
movie started. I remember this teaser trailer very vividly. It's
(13:19):
a group of people in the Museum of Natural History.
They're looking at the Tyrannosaurus Rex, you know, the bones
of it. And this is before Jurassic Park so this
was all calculated. They knew this was going to debut
before the new Jurassic Park movie. So they have the
t Rex right, and then boom, Godzilla's foot crashes through
the ceiling and smashes the t Rex, and then it's
(13:40):
revealed that a year from then, you know, they're going
to be releasing a Godzilla movie. And it was like, wow,
they can release trailers a year prior to the movie
actually being released. That is something I don't think was
happening years ago. That pretty much started. I want to
say Godzilla was one of those first movies to really
(14:01):
start that buzz a year prior to it being released.
The movie ended up being terrible, but you know, the
marketing was so good. I want to lump some of
the marketing along within this conversation of just trailers. But
posters are very important. The modern poster is terrible. It's
always some just just horrible photoshoped green screen sort of crap.
(14:23):
And back in the day, there was an art to
the poster. Look up a guy Drew Strusen, look up
a guy like John Alvin. These are movie poster artists
that crafted these amazing creations for movies like Indiana Jones
and Back to the Future and Aladdin, and it's art.
It's work of art, and there's this simplicity to it
and an intrigue that you get from just looking.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
At a logo.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Look at the logo for Jurassic Park, look at the
logo for Ghostbusters. Those are iconic images, just a simple
black background with a simple logo, and it sold the
movie Batman from nineteen eighty nine, a simple logo that
is so iconic. You're not getting that anymore. What logo
for a movie has come out in the last twenty
(15:06):
five years where it's iconic. Look at the poster for
the original Avengers movie, one of the ugliest posters ever conceived.
I like the movie, but the poster is shit. And
that's part of this whole marketing scheme. And Godzilla really
perfected that with you know, collaborations with Taco Bell and
anytime you'd see a bus, it would have a giant
(15:26):
banner on it saying, you know, Godzilla's cock is the
size of this bus. I swear to God I saw
that somewhere two trailers before the movie, Jerry Maguire, I
rent to Jerry Maguire, and two trailers showed that I
was so excited for and again you're rewinding the VHS tape,
(15:47):
rewatching it over and over again. And luckily these two
movies ended up being two of my favorite movies of
all time. Men in Black and Starship Troopers fantastic trailers.
Didn't show too much, but showed it enough to get
you interested in what you're going to be seeing moving forward.
I think The Dark Knight did a fantastic job, especially
(16:10):
after the tragic passing of Heath Ledger. It's a tough
thing to market a movie once you know your your
co star dies. You know, how do you market this?
How do you how do you talk about this movie
when you go on the Tonight Show without mentioning Heath Ledger?
How do you show movie trailers without you know that
in the back of your head that you know the
main antagonist of this movie is is dead in the
(16:32):
real world. And they did a really good job The
Dark Knight. And they did something that I think, again
I could be mistaken, but this is just from my
memory that I don't know if it was ever done before,
but before the movie, I am legend they showed an
entire scene from the movie now looking back at it.
(16:53):
I'm not a fan that they did that. They're they're
they're showing an entire scene from the movie. But at
the time it was a big thing. A lot of
people went to go see I Am Legends, specifically to
watch this scene from The Dark Knight because there was
such a buzz around that movie. And I use that
word buzz, but it's it's true and that and that's
(17:13):
something that I know I've said a few times with
this specific episode of the podcast, but.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
That's what the trailer needs to do.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
There needs to be something about the trailer that get
you not wanting to forget what you saw and makes
you want to buy a ticket and go see the movie.
It is so important now in today's day and age,
there's things like Ron Tomatoes and that's a whole different
discussion for a different day, but that's that's another big
(17:42):
selling point for people. Is you know, is the audience
score good? Is the is the critics score good for
a movie? But for a lot of people, they ignore that.
They just go by did I enjoy the trailer? And
it's especially in a pre Ron Tomatoes day and age,
the trailer was what got you to go see the movie.
(18:04):
You go on YouTube, some of the most highest viewed
videos in the history of that website are movie trailers.
People love movies, but I think a lot of people
love the idea of a trailer because I like to
think of it as the.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Opening of a football season.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It's like Week one, right, you don't know what the
team's gonna be going into the preseason. You get the
teaser trailer and that's sort of an indication as to
what this team or what this movie is going to be.
Are people invested in the team? Are people gonna go
the pay to watch the Mets or watch you know,
I know I said football, but you know where my
Mets giar right now? So are people gonna go watch
(18:44):
the Jets?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Based off of that Week one, based off of that
trailer that was initially shown. And I think that buzz
and excitement, like I said, is gone with the internet
these days.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
You know what's coming out.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
But I just have all those fond memories of when
I was a kid and I didn't know what was
coming out and you would be shocked and surprised. That
wonder with cinema, and that's going to do it for
this edition of the film Real. My name is Justin Greenberg.
Thank you all for listening, so long coming
This production is brought to you by the Recess Bell Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How are you doing guys?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's me Justin Greenberg, the guy who hosts this show
that I don't know if anyone's even listening to, but
I love doing it. It's Film Reel right here on
the Recess Bell Network, and today I'm gonna be talking
about movie trailers. Now, the beauty of this show is
it's my personal stories. If you want to learn the
(00:33):
history of movie trailers, I know they've been around for
well over one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm not gonna know that stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
But the reason why I love doing this show is
because it's, you know, essentially my childhood, my growing up,
and my history with movies. So that's what this episode's
gonna be about. We're gonna talk about the positives of
movie trailers, the negatives of movie trailers, some of my
all time favorites, and some of the cliches that I
(00:59):
just absolutely hate that go along with seemingly every single
movie trailer these days.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So let's get into it right now here we go,
we're starting. Did I hit recording? Yep, it's recording.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Let's start off with the positives of movie trailers. I
actually think there's a lot more negatives or trailers than
there are positives, But to me, they are the selling point.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
They are a.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Quick gauge into seeing if an audience is interested in
a movie. And especially when you go to the movies
and you're watching it with an audience, you could tell
if a movie is going to have a certain buzz
around it based off of the trailer, whether it's the
murmuring after the trailer ends, oh, I got to see that,
you'll hear someone in the background. I vividly remember seeing
(02:10):
the movie Spawn in movie theaters and there was a
trailer for Alient Resurrection and a guy in the back
of the audience.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Said, I can't wait to see that one.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
In a sarcastic tone, and the whole audience was dying laughing.
And I think that, you know, that was true with
what the actual movie was. It was a terrible movie.
It didn't do good and and that trailer didn't do
a good selling point to you know, get audiences invested
into the movie. Sometimes there's just a certain buzz around
(02:42):
a trailer, you know. For me, the teaser trailer is
something I'm actually into more than the actual trailer. I
feel like you know, a full length trailer. People that
don't know what the fuck a trailer is, I guess
you should explain. It's the preview before the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The previews. You know, you're watching the previous.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
If you don't know what a trailer is and you're
watching or listening to me talk about movies, she probably
stopped listening to the podcast at this point. I'm not
gonna baby this yar trailer. You know what a trailer.
I'm not talking about a trailer that's you know, in
the back of a truck, movie previews trailers, I think
the teaser trailer, which is usually like a thirty second thing.
To me, that's that's what really gets me hooked in
(03:20):
because it's more mysterious. You're not seeing so much. And
again we're gonna get to some of the negatives of
trailers later on, and you know, one of those is
showing too much of what the movie is. But the
teaser trailer, that's where your intrigue really starts. When I
was a kid, I actually loved the previews. I remember
there were shows actually on TV, you know, pre internet,
(03:41):
that would just show movie previews. When you rented a
movie coming soon to a theater near you, you know,
that would play before each movie, and we loved it.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Coming soon to theaters, coming, coming, coming, We loved it
as a kid.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
One of the earlier episodes on this podcast, I was
talking about the movie Mortal Kombat, and when me and
my brother rented Dumb and Dumber, they showed a teaser
trailer for Mortal Kombat and we rewound that thing forty
or fifty times, just watching it over and over again.
Now with the Internet, that's where people get their teaser trailers.
On the last episode of Film Reel, we were talking
about physical media and how no major studios are actually
(04:20):
releasing physical media, so you're not gonna get those trailers
prior to the movies because they're not being released. And
Netflix and other streaming services don't have you previews before
the movies. I wonder if that's something they'll eventually implement,
But if you're going to see your trailers these days,
it's usually on the Internet. That's where you get your
first experience with it. And again, I don't like that,
(04:41):
that's one of the negatives. I like being introduced to
the movie preview before an actual movie, so I try
and avoid all trailers until I actually am seeing it
on the big screen. I loved the surprise of a
trailer when, especially when I was younger, that's I hate
to be this old guy. Oh it's so much better
(05:03):
back in my day, But it just was. It really was,
and you're not surprised by pretty much anything these days.
You know, let's just use Marvel for example. They've mapped
out the next ten years of Marvel movies, so you
know what's coming next. Unless you're living under a rock
and avoiding all social media. You know they're making a
(05:25):
Fantastic four. You know they're making you know, another Avengers
movie down the line. But when you were younger and
the internet really wasn't a thing, those movie previews were
the introduction, the the hey we're making a new Batman movie.
Hey they're making a Spawn movie, and that's lost. Let's
(05:48):
get into the negatives because there's I feel like there's
a lot more negatives when it comes to modern movie trailers.
If you go back to like the seventies, trailers were terrible.
They really were terrible. The initial Star Wars trailer was
a laugh joke. Everyone saw that trailer and thought this
movie was going to be horrendous Star Wars a billion
years in the making, and it's coming to your galaxy
(06:11):
this summer. That's coming. I really think they start to
perfect the trailer in the nineties and actually into the
early two thousands. That's when they become really cinematic, and
a lot of the times the trailers were significantly better
than the actual movie. And that's one of the negatives.
(06:32):
And another big negative is a lot of these trailers.
And you hear this cliche all the time, but it
is so true. These movie trailers show way too much.
You get all the big jokes when it comes to
a comedy, you get all the big scares when it
comes to a horror movie. It also spoils certain things.
So let's just go back to an example that I
(06:54):
want to bring up. The last Star Wars movie to
come out, Episode nine, an awful movie. But in the
trailer for this movie, they showed a lot of scenes
with Chewbacca with other characters, and around a third way
through the movie, you're supposed to believe that Chewbacca dies.
But I'm sitting there in the theater and I'm going
(07:14):
I saw the trailer. There's several scenes that weren't there,
so we know he's going to show back up because
I saw him interact with so and so. I saw
him interact there, and we haven't gotten those scenes, just
so you just gave that away. I think the worst
example of a trailer spoiling things is the movie Castaway,
(07:36):
which is such.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
A good movie.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Tom Hanks. He's trapped on an island. Will he get
off the Oh yeah, he will get off the island,
because the trailer shows him getting off the island.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We were launched for four years. We had a funeral coffin.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
What was in it that I cannot believe that they
would allow that. Now, a lot of directors don't really
even have say as to what goes into the trailer.
That's the studios call. But you think somebody like Robert
SimK is a guy who made Back to the Future,
who framed Roger Rabbit Forrest Gump, would have some say.
So I'm curious as to how he would allow such
(08:17):
a monumental moment in the movie get released in the trailer.
Absolutely embarrassing. There's a couple of cliches that I've noticed,
and I want you guys to notice next time you
go to the movies, because they're pretty much there'll you're
guaranteed to see it now if Hollywood decides to ever
make a comedy again, because that's just something that they
(08:39):
don't do anymore. You'll notice one trend. There'll be music
playing throughout the trailer. Then to accentuate the joke, they
will stop the music, and that's the cue for the
audience to laugh along. It's sort of like when you're
watching a sitcom and they have the laugh tracks. It's
to get the sheep to go, yeah, yeah, that's supposed
(09:04):
to be funny. Hey, I'm calling about the ad for
healthy girls with good sat scores.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
She could take your clothes off in there. I don't
know if it's even legal.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Another cliche, which I think is something that's far more
recent than the stopping of the music for comedy, it's
this taking a classic song and then having a slowed
down version of it. I don't know why they think
this is so epic. They'll take the dumbest song.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
The Wilds on the busco.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Down and now they haven't used that song, but I
wouldn't be shocked if they do that.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I'm incapable of leaving you alone.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Duff had a rough start in life, you should steer
clear for me healthy every time you go to the
movies and you're watching at least five or six trailers.
One of those previous we'll have some song from the sixties, seventies, eighties,
and they'll do a remixed version of it slowed down
(10:07):
to be epic. Music is so important to not just
the actual movie, but the trailer, and that anytime that happens,
I roll my eyes and go ugh, we're doing that
cliche again. How about some of the best Let's again
way too much negative. Let's talk about some of the
best movie trailers. Let's start with one that was a
(10:29):
bad movie, because that's something that could happen. That's always
so fascinating. Sometimes really good movies have bad trailers, likely
we talked about with Star Wars, and then sometimes it's
vice versa.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
There there's a trailer that's so good.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And you're like, this movie can't be bad, and then
it ends up being crappy. One of those that stands
out for me is Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.
I thought this was gonna be freaking fantastic. The special
effects were great, didn't reveal too much about the plot.
We're getting a new Apes movie after thirty something years.
And then the movie actually started and it was horrendous,
(11:04):
but a fantastic, well put together trailer. One that I
was so interested in was Cloverfield. I didn't really care
for the movie, but that initial teaser trailer there was
so much buzz. I'm telling you everyone on the internet
was talking about this preview because there was so little
(11:26):
information about it. Nobody really knew what it was going
to be. And I remember people online trying to decipher
what the people in the trailer were actually saying.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
There is that a lion?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I remember people thinking as there were a giant lion
and ended up being a random monster. But other people
thought it was a Godzilla movie. They thought this was
some secret Godzilla movie that was being made. And there
was such a fantastic buzz around that trailer. Speaking of buzz,
the marketing, the whole marketing around the Blair Witch project
(11:55):
absolutely brilliant, and those trailers made it seem like what
we were watching was a documentary. And again, you would
lose that in twenty twenty four when I'm recording this podcast,
something like that would be debunked right away.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You'd have a Facebook page of the actors.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You'd have a Twitter account, they'd have a TikTok, you'd
know that these were actors. Somehow, some way that would
be revealed. But back in nineteen ninety nine, when the
Internet that we know is in its infancy, that marketing
buzz that was really like the first movie to really
use the Internet to its advantage. A majority of the
(12:35):
people had no idea what we were watching. Is this
a documentary? And I know the movie is very divisive,
I love it, but the trailer, there's no denying that
that buzz surrounding the movie all because of the trailer
sold that film and it became one of the most
profitable movies of all time, simply, I think based off
(12:57):
of its marketing. You want to talk about marketing everywhere.
Godzilla from the year before nineteen ninety eight. The buzz
for this movie started the year prior when Jurassic Park
two The Lost World was in theaters, and before that
movie started. I remember this teaser trailer very vividly. It's
(13:19):
a group of people in the Museum of Natural History.
They're looking at the Tyrannosaurus Rex, you know, the bones
of it. And this is before Jurassic Park so this
was all calculated. They knew this was going to debut
before the new Jurassic Park movie. So they have the
t Rex right, and then boom, Godzilla's foot crashes through
the ceiling and smashes the t Rex, and then it's
(13:40):
revealed that a year from then, you know, they're going
to be releasing a Godzilla movie. And it was like, wow,
they can release trailers a year prior to the movie
actually being released. That is something I don't think was
happening years ago. That pretty much started. I want to
say Godzilla was one of those first movies to really
(14:01):
start that buzz a year prior to it being released.
The movie ended up being terrible, but you know, the
marketing was so good. I want to lump some of
the marketing along within this conversation of just trailers. But
posters are very important. The modern poster is terrible. It's
always some just just horrible photoshoped green screen sort of crap.
(14:23):
And back in the day, there was an art to
the poster. Look up a guy Drew Strusen, look up
a guy like John Alvin. These are movie poster artists
that crafted these amazing creations for movies like Indiana Jones
and Back to the Future and Aladdin, and it's art.
It's work of art, and there's this simplicity to it
and an intrigue that you get from just looking.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
At a logo.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Look at the logo for Jurassic Park, look at the
logo for Ghostbusters. Those are iconic images, just a simple
black background with a simple logo, and it sold the
movie Batman from nineteen eighty nine, a simple logo that
is so iconic. You're not getting that anymore. What logo
for a movie has come out in the last twenty
(15:06):
five years where it's iconic. Look at the poster for
the original Avengers movie, one of the ugliest posters ever conceived.
I like the movie, but the poster is shit. And
that's part of this whole marketing scheme. And Godzilla really
perfected that with you know, collaborations with Taco Bell and
anytime you'd see a bus, it would have a giant
(15:26):
banner on it saying, you know, Godzilla's cock is the
size of this bus. I swear to God I saw
that somewhere two trailers before the movie, Jerry Maguire, I
rent to Jerry Maguire, and two trailers showed that I
was so excited for and again you're rewinding the VHS tape,
(15:47):
rewatching it over and over again. And luckily these two
movies ended up being two of my favorite movies of
all time. Men in Black and Starship Troopers fantastic trailers.
Didn't show too much, but showed it enough to get
you interested in what you're going to be seeing moving forward.
I think The Dark Knight did a fantastic job, especially
(16:10):
after the tragic passing of Heath Ledger. It's a tough
thing to market a movie once you know your your
co star dies. You know, how do you market this?
How do you how do you talk about this movie
when you go on the Tonight Show without mentioning Heath Ledger?
How do you show movie trailers without you know that
in the back of your head that you know the
main antagonist of this movie is is dead in the
(16:32):
real world. And they did a really good job The
Dark Knight. And they did something that I think, again
I could be mistaken, but this is just from my
memory that I don't know if it was ever done before,
but before the movie, I am legend they showed an
entire scene from the movie now looking back at it.
(16:53):
I'm not a fan that they did that. They're they're
they're showing an entire scene from the movie. But at
the time it was a big thing. A lot of
people went to go see I Am Legends, specifically to
watch this scene from The Dark Knight because there was
such a buzz around that movie. And I use that
word buzz, but it's it's true and that and that's
(17:13):
something that I know I've said a few times with
this specific episode of the podcast, but.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
That's what the trailer needs to do.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
There needs to be something about the trailer that get
you not wanting to forget what you saw and makes
you want to buy a ticket and go see the movie.
It is so important now in today's day and age,
there's things like Ron Tomatoes and that's a whole different
discussion for a different day, but that's that's another big
(17:42):
selling point for people. Is you know, is the audience
score good? Is the is the critics score good for
a movie? But for a lot of people, they ignore that.
They just go by did I enjoy the trailer? And
it's especially in a pre Ron Tomatoes day and age,
the trailer was what got you to go see the movie.
(18:04):
You go on YouTube, some of the most highest viewed
videos in the history of that website are movie trailers.
People love movies, but I think a lot of people
love the idea of a trailer because I like to
think of it as the.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Opening of a football season.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It's like Week one, right, you don't know what the
team's gonna be going into the preseason. You get the
teaser trailer and that's sort of an indication as to
what this team or what this movie is going to be.
Are people invested in the team? Are people gonna go
the pay to watch the Mets or watch you know,
I know I said football, but you know where my
Mets giar right now? So are people gonna go watch
(18:44):
the Jets?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Based off of that Week one, based off of that
trailer that was initially shown. And I think that buzz
and excitement, like I said, is gone with the internet
these days.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
You know what's coming out.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
But I just have all those fond memories of when
I was a kid and I didn't know what was
coming out and you would be shocked and surprised. That
wonder with cinema, and that's going to do it for
this edition of the film Real. My name is Justin Greenberg.
Thank you all for listening, so long coming
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