Bad and Good Trailers

I love a good movie but sometimes I watch trailers of films after I've seen them and find that they are a completely inaccurate portrayal of the essence of the movie. I know I should get off my high horse but this just really ticks me off. For example the other week I watched the excellent Arrietty by Studio Ghibli (in Japanese of course, English translations of Asian dialogue are too awkward for my taste) and then watched the American trailer on Youtube.

There are two major problems I have. The first being that the trailer has actually just given away the whole movie, even the ending and this upsets me because there are no surprises anymore.

The second is all those jokes they insert into the trailer that are standard with American comedy trailers in that the music will suddenly stop when the pun comes and everyone's meant to laugh, music resumes. Its old and lame and Arrietty is not a comedy at all.

Those poor American kids will be so disappointed and bored during the movie because they can never sit still and with this film I can imagine for children they need an insane amount of patience to survive it.

Compare the American trailer with the British one below.

This trailer is not only insanely truthful to the film but it also manages to entice target audiences while not giving away the entire plot.

Most film trailer productions are outsourced to advertising agencies who produce the 2 minute clips. Sure they know how to market a film so that it looks amazing but sometimes they just butcher it as demonstrated by the first trailer. Below I've included a few of my most favourite trailers of recent films that made me really excited to watch the movie. Of the 4 of them I was insanely disappointed by The Roommate and Beastly but they still had excellent trailers.

Another Earth (see earlier post for review)

The Roommate

Never Let Me Go (see earlier post for review)

Beastly