Below is a list of trailer that changed my outlook on life. Seriously, some gave me something to look forward to for several months straight, while others made me question why I’d ever let Hollywood touch my films. So here they are:
Trailers that Changed my Life:
The Two Towers Theatrical Trailer
Nostalgic and honestly pretty lame for the first one minute. But then the music starts brooding, and at 1:28 is one of the best “Hell yes! Whaaat!!!” shots in cinematic trailer history that blew my mind when I saw it, followed by the introduction of THE consummate trailer music: a remix of Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream theme that has been used in fan-boy trailers ever since. The epic-ness of the visuals coupled with the epic-ness of the music make it a classic. I think this was one of the first trailers I downloaded in .MOV format back on the site “movie-list.com”. I also downloaded the remix on Napster! Remember that!? Waiting hours to download 3 MB on 56kbps dial up?!
I must have seen this trailer ten times before sleeping through the midnight screening of it. Needless to say the third movie’s trailer is not on this list.
And just for good measure, the teaser trailer is not bad either.
The Matrix Reloaded Theatrical Trailer
Though the screening of Two Towers went pretty poorly in my mind, it did show the trailer for this bad boy which had me pumped for 5 whole months! Great visuals cut to fun techno driven music (Andy Hunter’s Wonders of You) followed by Rob Dougan’s epic “I’m not driving anymore” instrumental (album version here)…it’s the definition of what I find fun. It got me online finding out the music and downloading Rob Dougan’s Furious Angels album and the original Matrix soundtrack and score. It even made me go out and BUY the Matrix Reloaded 2-CD soundtrack Album and Score weeks before the film’s release (all soundtracks are officially released before the film’s release date, i.e. I didn’t buy it bootlegged). I fell in love with the score especially tracks 3-7 and especially Juno Reactor’s Mona Lisa Overdrive, which we used for our friends Magic Promo video back in 2006. I knew the music by heart by the time I walked into the theaters. So when everyone else was enjoying the film for the first time, I was was bobbing my head to the music, and disappointed when the end came and it went to Don Davis’s bastardization of his own theme. Another disappointing film, but at least in this one, there’s was 10 whole minutes of bliss in the theaters. It also played the teaser trailer to Bad Boys II (below) that would give me something to look forward to for the next two months.
Bad Boys II Teaser Trailer
First off, I had never seen Bad Boys I before seeing this, but I had seen The Rock, which I owned on VHS and maybe also DVD at the time (I now own it on Blu-Ray as well), but I did know that Bad Boys existed and being a good boy I never got around to asking my parents to rent the movie “Bad Boys”. But I knew who Michael Bay was and knew his IMDB. I also knew who Will Smith was, and knew his IMDB. I also have a photographic memory for film visuals and trailer visuals. So for the first 15 second I had no idea what the film was about, but I recognized the visual style, and liked the editing and music, but when I saw the Navy seals pop out of the water, I turned toward my brother and his turn confirmed our shared thought: Somebody stole that shot from The Rock! But when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence popped up 15 seconds later, we both screamed “Bad Boys 2!!!” to the whole theater. And then a wonderful minute and a half followed, complete with sexy imagery, bright saturated locales, explosions, girls, action, cars flipping, crazy camera moves, fun music and protagonists smiling, laughing, singing the theme song, and making silly ass jokes like “We usually only do the chorus”. What more can you ask for in a movie? Seriously. It looked like a ton of fun to watch! By the end we knew we were going to watch it. Period. So we avoided trailers for it, closing our eyes and plugging our ears when it would come on TV or in theaters. And two months later when we finally saw it, we were satisfied. So much so that we went out to find the other trailers and found what I think is the best trailer ever made.
Bad Boys II Theatrical Trailer
From start to finish: it’s full throttle. The first whole minute is a basically a summary of the best car chase in the movie. It includes all the funny jokes and ends on a shared moment of are-we-having-fun-yet when Will Smith lets out a “Woooo!!” Followed by flashy logos and more jokes and sick editing and burnout flash transitions, ending in the LOL moment of Will Smith’s reaction to “I was at a family barbecue”. We ARE having fun. And then it keeps going. More jokes, more fast cutting, and non-stop invented dialogues and story due to the magic of trailer editing. And it all tops off after Will Smith’s classic line: “We ride together, we die together, Bad Boys for life,” which eschews in the perfect trailer music from the Face/Off soundtrack (thanks John Powell, you the man!) which sets up the pace for the epic car crashes and explosions that culminate to the final shared moment: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence laughing and having fun, like the audience.
Trailers Today that have me going again:
That’s the end of the trailers that really changed my life so here are some trailers that got me excited recently. We’ll start with Michael Bay’s return to character driven films like Bad boys.
Pain and Gain TV Spot
Admittedly, the theatrical trailer was weird. It definitely made the movie look like nothing happened. Unlike Bad Boys 1, there’s no explosions or crazy car chases, but I understand since just like Bad Boys 1, this film was made for the price of a bad horror movie, probably 10% of a normal budget for a Michael Bay film. Don’t get me wrong it still got me excited to see Marky Mark and Dwayne Johnson on the big screen with Bay behind camera, but it was definitely a weird trailer. But the TV spot really boils it down and has me going again. It has everything I love again: bright saturated visuals in a sunny locale, large nice and fun egos, and great trailer music. Sure you may not love dubstep, but the track they played worked perfectly for the high energy and chaotic footage and editing. It was simply a fun video to watch and listen to. And now I’m really excited for what Michael Bay has to offer us. No big expectations, but I at least know it will be fun and ridiculous.
Fast & Furious 6 Superbowl Theatrical Trailer
First off, Fast Five was awesome. It was fun, hyper-masculine, and had huge egos fighting and smiling. You couldn’t ask for more in a movie. And since Fast Five, The Rock has become stronger, more famous, and more of my everyday life since I follow his Facebook page. So I’m already excited for Fast 6. And to be honest the first half of the trailer was a bunch of bad dialogue and unnecessary plot. But the last 30 seconds sold it. I mean come on! Ludicrous says it all, “Um, they got tanks!” Move aside Indy 3, I think we’re in store for the best tank chase ever! I was a little skeptical when watching this the first time at the super bowl, but then a car flies out of the front an exploding cargo plane and I was sold. They know why we go to the theaters still. To have fun and watch a spectacle! We’ll see if it delivers, but I haven’t been this excited for an action film in a long time.
Favorite trailers for films I first saw on DVD or VHS:
Independence Day Theatrical Trailer
It’s the perfect summary for the classic film. It’s got action, epic visuals, and a loop of Hans Zimmer music for a whole two minutes. In fact, it opens up with music from Speed for the first 30 seconds, followed by Hans Zimmer’s Crimson Tide Roll Tide theme for two minutes straight, then the Terminator Two theme song ending for the last 2 seconds. It even inspired us to make that same Crimson Tide loop into an 11 minute video, which is a much favorited video among fans of the theme.
The Rock Theatrical Trailer
The first minute pulls down the replay value, but once the Bad Boys soundtrack kicks in around 1:23, I can’t stop watching it. The fast, easy to watch editing, the narration, the invented dialogues, the clever way they introduce the lead actors and give them something to say, and the consummate trailer finale music make this a top-notch trailer. Around 1:55 the chase music from Bad Boys kicks in and the narrator starts name dropping: Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Michael Bay, Bad Boys, Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris: Fire! Then the drag race music for Bad Boys kicks in and we get treated to an onslaught of beautiful action footage that seems to be from 100 different locations, all edited perfectly to the music of Mark Mancina for an epic crescendo of images and explosions. The finale music was so perfect we even used it for the finale of our spoof trailer BHBB that made fun of both Bruckheimer and Bay films. This is also one of our favorite movies to watch. It’s a little slow at parts, but the music is so much fun to listen to. It’s like the best rock band on the planet teamed up with Zimmer to play some awesome themes and fun action cues. Yet to this day, I’ve never heard anything that sound even remotely similar to The Rock’s soundscape. It’s also a fun movie to watch. From the mutiny scene until the end of the credits, every second is tense nostalgic and above all fun.
Broken Arrow Theatrical Trailer
Not really a favorite trailer or even that good of a trailer in my mind. In fact, the music pulls it back for the middle minute or so, and the finale cue is just hard to have fun with on first listen. And the narration is just bad. But it’s one of our favorite movies so I thought I’d share its trailer. Maybe it’s because it was one of the first action films we ever saw, but more likely because it has an amazing score by Hans Zimmer, non-stop action, leads (both good and bad) who smile incessantly and are having fun at all times, and because of John Woo’s visual style.
And just as a reference the finale cue for the trailer is Charlie Loses his Head, from Hans Zimmer’s Black Rain soundtrack, which was Zimmer’s first collaboration with Ridley Scott. And if you skip to 6:10, you can hear The Dark Knight/Batman Begins theme.
Star Wars Episode I Theatrical Trailer
Admittedly, we saw this trailer before the films came out, since I remember downloading it from apple.com/trailers back in the day. But it’s still so good.
Worst Trailers for Movies I like and Movies that Sucked:
Pirates 1 Teaser Trailer
Cheesy music, stock footage, and no plot. It got me really disappointed in Jerry Bruckheimer. Like he had sold out and made another bad kid’s movie. Kangaroo Jack had released in January 2003 (also produced by Bruckheimer), and we all saw the trailers for that. So I wasn’t too excited about Disney’s Pirates. Furthermore, it starred Tim Burton, I mean Johnny Depp. Ah, they’re the same person. So the movie was for sure going to be weird. Fortunately, while visiting my uncle in Orlando, Florida for our yearly summer vacation, he dragged us to go see the kid’s film. And we were blown out of the water. Boy was it a fun summer movie. It had fun dialogue, large egos, big characters, bright saturated locales, crazy action, and fun music that we were positive was written by Hans Zimmer, but turned out was some guy named Klaus Badelt. The scene where Geoffrey Rush tells Keira Knightley to start believing in ghost stories had us convinced that Zimmer wrote the music or someone stole the Gladiator theme for their soundtrack. We even stayed until the end of the credits to successfully find out that Hans Zimmer had indeed produced the soundtrack, but didn’t compose it (though by the time the sequels rolled out, Hans Zimmer admitted to writing the themes in a 2 night stint so his composers at Media Ventures, now Remote control productions, could finish the score in 19 days thanks to Alan Silvestri’s subpar attempt; see paragraph below. Furthermore note: Alan Silvestri recently scored The Avengers which, by no accident it seems, had a really crappy theme song). We loved the movie so much that we bought the score for this film too, ripped it to WAV on our computer and used Adobe Premiere 6.0 to edit an 18 minute best of suite, that we listen to on at least a weekly basis. It also started a DuenasFilms tradition of making best-of suites that has produced mixes for Pirates 2, 3, Dark Knight, The Rock, Independence Day, and others. It also made us check out the theatrical trailer which is actually pretty good:
Pirates of the Caribbean Theatrical Trailer
So it’s not one of my favorite trailers but there’s not much to complain about AND it’s got a great last 30 seconds scored by none other than Hans Zimmer (well it’s from another Hans Zimmer soundtrack: Drop Zone, specifically After the Dub).
Aside: The source of the Pirates soundtracks
So here it is. The article that tells all about how the pirates scoring went down.
http://www.soundtrack.net/content/article/?id=205
Basically, the story is as follows. Alan Silvestri gets hired to score Pirates, thus the cheesy pirates music in the Teaser Trailer above (the stuff Silvestri was showing them probably sounded as campy and kiddy as his music for Super Mario Bros. or his Who Framed Roger Rabbit score). At the last minute, Gore and Bruckheimer decide its not working, so they fire him. Fortunately for Hans, both Gore and Bruckheimer had worked with Zimmer on previous films (Gore’s The Ring and Bruckheimer’s Crimson Tide & The Rock) and call him up to finish the job. Unfortunately, Hans is in a binding contract with Ed Zwick and Tom Cruise to not work on any other film for the next 6 months until they release The Last Samurai, so Zimmer can’t officially work on it. So what does Zimmer do? He gets drunk and jams out with his composing friends for a whole night and produces a 5 minute demo track that contains the Pirates theme and the film score’s “sonic world”. They finish at 4:35am and title the demo track 4:35am and send it to Bruckheimer who signs Media Ventures (Zimmer’s studio which houses under on roof several composers including Klaus Badelt, Blake Neely, Geoff Zanelli and others) to finish the 2 1/2 hour score in 19 days. Thus the crappy mixes, harsh quality, derivative themes, and high energy of the score.
The article includes a link to the original demo track that Hans Zimmer wrote drunk with a bunch of his composing buddies at Media Ventures. The link is broken, but I uploaded a video on YouTube presented here as “4:35am“. You’ll notice the background riff from Miami Jump from the Drop Zone soundtrack and a riff that appears again in The Contender (TV, 2004) theme song.
I think it was the quest for figuring out Hans Zimmer’s involvement that lead us to this site as well:
Credits to film Trailers:
http://www.soundtrack.net/trailers/
The site lists the names of songs used in trailers for Hollywood films. It lead us to X-Ray dog and Immediate Music which are recording studios that specifically produce a bunch of generic trailer music for Hollywood to use under license. Their music as a genre is called Production music and includes music specifically made for commercial music or filler music on any TV show.
Star Wars episode I Teaser Trailer
Hard transitions, no story, and cheesy narration. It’s a pure teaser but at least we were getting another Star Wars! Though we had all seen the digital remastering in 1997, so we all had our reservations.