The Phantom Menace.
Groups of highschool kids flooded into the local computer store to watch the Quicktime .mov load 1 frame at a time over the ISDN line in 1999. And of course the first 20 seconds of the trailer was literally fog, keeping us on the edge of our seats.
You didn’t even need the trailer. The teaser poster was cooler than the whole movie. 9 year old me was fucking stoked just seeing this:
My friend and I went to watch Analyze This because we knew that they would show the trailer there. Luckily the movie itself was good as well.
I especially loved the poem trailers. Each character had a short trailer reciting a poem. I liked Maul's and Shmi's the most.
Suicide Squad had a pretty cool trailer. It was so popular they gave the movie edit over to the studio that made the trailer.
From what I heard, they screen tested both versions of the movie, the directors version and the one edited by the trailer company, and both tested equally the same. Rather than defer to the director, they chose to take the scenes which tested the best in each version of the edit, and combine those together into the mess we saw.
https://www.cbr.com/suicide-squad-ayer-cut-theatrical-release-tested-the-same/
Holy shit, really?
That is Sony levels of stupid.
I would argue that Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019 film) was not as good as the trailer lead me to beleve. Specifically the trailer with Clair de Lune by Debussy. Like they hit some of the beats I was looking forward to, but the I disagree with the execution. Ultimately, I felt the movie rang a tad hollow.
Lots of style, good ideas, lack of meaningful substance.
I loved that movie's version of King Ghidorah, I liked any and all of the monster scenes. The problem is that it fell to the Transformers issue, where they focused on the humans than the monsters. I didn't care about the parents and child conflict but it tried butting in the story at many moments.
Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Man I love that trailer. I probably watched it like 30 times. It was perfect. Then I saw the movie. And I was sad.
Three...movies...
For an otherwise 350-page book.
I'm still not over that. My solution to the Hobbit mess was, go for broke and make one 3-hour film. If the LOTR movies were long and got extended editions, why not Hobbit? No it got 3 whole movies and so much stuff got crammed in there that honestly shouldn't have been in there in the first place.
Wtf was tauriel? I get it, diversity. But she was completely unnecessary
Or why Azog was there, a character who died out many years before the Hobbit journey even began. Like was Smaug, the Necromancer and the Goblin King not enough for antagonists? That's quite stacked if you tell me.
Man of Steel had an amazing first trailer that included the music from the crying scene in Fellowship of the Ring after Gandalf falls to the Balrog.
I think Man of Steel is a better movie than it gets credit for, but the trailer is legit great.
Man of Steel trailer 3 is still tops for me, I posted it in this thread. When MoS was released I was so delighted, but after the initial awe wore off, in hindsight it was a disappointing Superman movie for many reasons (mostly the hope that Supes embodies). The most recent Superman movie by Gunn is the Superman movie I've wanted every since the original Superman the Movie with Reeve.
I hear you, but weirdly enough I feel the opposite! I do get that the hope and optimism part was severely lacking in MoS, and it's more present in Gunn's new movie. But I kinda think of Superman as the wooden goodie-two-shoes of the JLU animated series, and to me Henry Cavill did that better than David Corenswet did. I feel like the Superman from Gunn's movie is kinda underpowered and a little too "normal quirky funny nerd guy" rather than the straight-edge force of nature I feel like JLU Superman is. I feel like MoS almost got that, but then injected a bunch of sadness and desaturation which brought it down a bit
Will Smith turned down The Matrix for this movie...
Probably for the best. I just can't imagine Will Smith being Neo.
Can't find it but I was almost positive there was a trailer for 9 set to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRh_koli9E
I was gonna say 9 as well, but I only remember the Coheed and Cambria trailer
Yes, hadn't even heard of them before that trailer and made that movie seem so awesome.
View from the Top.
I saw it when I was in my twenties with a friend because we (two mostly straight guys) thought we were going to see the latest silly Mike Myers movie. And then it turned out that he was barely in it! They just took all his scenes and put them in the trailer! The actual movie was a very dull romcom staring Gwyneth Paltrow and some guy who I don't remember being in the trailer at all.
When it ended, we walked out of the theater and just said to each other 'What the hell was that?'.
Also, I think Shallow Hal kind of falls in this too. I don't recall the trailer being great, but it had to be good enough that it got me to see that terrible movie.
Also, I don't know if this qualifies, but I remember that The Cable Guy staring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick was the first time I saw a movie and realized that a trailer can be misleading. They deliberately promoted it like The Mask and Ace Ventura. I think I was like 12 when I saw it, and it creeped me way the fuck out.
It wouldn't surprise me if it's actually a better movie than people remember, but the misleading promotion was a great way to ensure the movie didn't find its audience.
Black Panther Forever. First trailer made it on my music playlist.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Flubber 1997 Not because it was such a memorably great trailer, but just because it was so misleading. I don't want to watch that shitty movie all over again just to verify my claims but what I recall was, there were entire scenes or shots in the trailer that weren't in the movie at all, and they were kind of the best bits. I definitely expected a lot more crazy hijinks and time spent in the flying car with sentient mischievous green goo then what I remember ending up with. The whole flubber material having some will of its own too I seem to recall was a much less prominent aspect of the movie than was implied, it seemed to be just goo most of the time. So much screen time was spent worrying about the Professor's marriage and conflict with the University faculty, which was so boring for a kid especially when they marketed it so heavily and I was given to expect so different. Don't know if I'd have liked the 60's version better, from what I read and see in the trailer it does look like pretty much the same movie so likely suffered the same issues.
Ghost In The Shell (2017) with the Ki Theory soundtrack.
I love slow remixes of 80s music.
Why don't they let the people who make the trailers make the movies!
The trailer with the HALO jump is the only scene in the movie worth watching.
Finally pick any Zack Snyder movie.
A History of Violence. One of the few times I wanted my money back.
I cannot understate how shit Luc Besson's Jeanne d'Arc film was. At least, in my memory. I know, I know; everyone's got an opinion. These are my two cents. This movie really let me down.
The first teaser, which gave absolutely nothing away, was excellent. The cast was solid. I thought, cool, Besson is doing a period piece.
Wow, it was dog shit. Dustin Hoffman's role helped. But barely.
It was up for international awards. Milla Jovovich went for a Golden Raspberry.
Atlas on Netflix. Seemed like a knockoff titanfall type of movie but felt more like a movie filled with the main character talking to the AI suit lost and confused with maybe 10 minutes of what the trailer made it seem like it would be.
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