Saturday, May 02, 2015

All Trailers are the Same



Every action movie trailer follows the same formula in the past twenty years or so. The formula is so established that I’m often a bit confused as to whether this is a new trailer or something I’ve seen before. Red Letter Media lays out the formula.

Establishing shot of a city.
Bwaaaaaam! (often the sound familiar from Inception)
Mysterious, cryptic, and vague lines.
Make your characters look cool.
Build up to silence, then BAM!
Action Montage!
And don’t forget the powerful and/or inspiring monologue.
End montage with another cut to quiet.
Eh, throw in a laser shooting into the sky. Why not?
Title. (finally)
Clever and/or funny end tag before release date.

Each trope is illustrated with more examples than you can shake a stick at, if you were so inclined. (via Boing Boing)

3 comments:

  1. On a similar theme, no studio will release a movie today without the possibility of at least a dozen sequels.

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  2. That's a shame indeed. The best movie I can recall had unhappy endings.

    ReplyDelete