5 – Only God Forgives,
- So you’ve got a director who’s just had a big hit but he has just made a dark art film, how do you get people to see it? Just pretend its “Drive 2” and bam sold!
- Yes the trailer for this movie plays out like a dark crime thriller with atmospheric neon lighting and blood soaked violence. Much like the Director’s last film “Drive”. This got a lot of fans of the first movie pumped up.
- But unfortunately any similarities in the film are purely coincidental because it’s nothing like Drive at all and was never meant to be. While this one is again divisive you could blame the trailer for setting expectations too high and the critical backlash stems from there.
- The trailer though is an absolute masterpiece and should have won the Oscar for best film that year.
4 – Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,
- This is something that we can only hope to Yoda doesn’t happen again with the new trilogy. Episode I has an amazing trailer that like “The Force Awakens” trailer was met with praise and squees of fans across the world.
- Of course we know how this one turned out, all those awesome images from the trailer put into context of the whole film turned out to be a horrible let down that will haunt all Star Wars movies.
- This is a case that serves as a warning that even though a trailer is awesome we should always mindful that it could be the master workings of a sith. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat it’s self with Episode VII.
3 – Spider-Man 3,
- So much hype, how could it go wrong? The trailer for the third Spiderman installment had everything looking amazing with the symbiote appearing and the sandman looking great. The character arcs set in the first film coming to a peak and not a trace of Venom to be seen.
- To say that Venom is the problem with Spiderman 3 is a little unfair, the trailer also doesn’t show emo Peter Parker either or that all the interesting character stuff is more rushed and hollow in the film than it is the 3 minutes we just watched.
- The Spiderman 3 shown in the trailers would have been the crowning achievement of the Raimi films but instead we got burned again by some clever advertising for a terrible product.
2 – Battle: Los Angeles,
- You might not remember this one, which is its main problem…being totally forgettable. Remember that LA was invaded by aliens? I sure don’t because I can’t remember how this film played out.
- I do remember the trailer though and that was pretty unsettling. Using real life UFO accounts from around the world the film comes to the present with hundreds of people being murdered on the beach by alien sky laser explosion things. Then there’s a bunch of soldiers V alien stuff. It’s all pretty entertaining and the real UFO accounts add a fair amount of tension.
- But the film lacked all this became a mess of urban extra-terrestrial warfare…I think, I don’t really remember.
1 – The Last Airbender,
- The first teaser trailer for this was EPIC, absolutely fantastic in getting the basic premise of the film down with giving out too much and being equally awesome in pumping up people who hadn’t even seen the original series.
- Of course none of the epicness translated into the final film and Shyamalan you’ve done it again. I’m starting suspect that his whole strategy is not to make good films at all just a good trailer to get people to see it. Not working though is it M.Night because no one saw this film either.
- The trailer really does capture the spirit of the cartoon and it’s just the avatar blowing out candles with his wind powers but damn is it impressive. This makes what we got so much more painful to sit through knowing that someone had the right idea somewhere.