This week saw the release of two teaser trailers for two big releases due in 2015. I’m not usually the type of person who falls into the trap of trailers (see previous blog posts on this subject), however in both of these cases I made an exception. The first was for Jurassic World, a belated sequel in the Jurassic Park franchise. The trailer was so hyped up that it received its very own 17 second teaser trailer around a week before the full teaser trailer was released. I question the validity of this marketing method – isn’t it just a trailer for a trailer? Despite this grouchy opinion, the full trailer certainly did its job and I am perhaps looking forward to its release next summer all the more. It seems to have found the right balance between briefly analysing the plot without showing off much of the dinosaurs or the reason(s) why things go horribly wrong (again).
The second trailer I watched was for Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens. Last week I enjoyed a fake, fan-made trailer that was racking up a huge number of hits on YouTube and wherever other good trailers can be found (in other words, pretty much just on YouTube). I’ve always considered myself to be more of a Star Trek fan rather than of Star Wars, but as a fan of science fiction on the whole I appreciate what the Star Wars universe has done for cinema and the genre and at times can nitpick with the best of them. Or perhaps the average nitpickers. I don’t have a huge problem with George Lucas remastering his films, although I would prefer the originals to exist in some form or another simply because I don’t believe in retconning the past. Still, this teaser trailer has everything fans want to see – new characters in the spotlight, an intriguing glimpse of a new type of lightsaber, and the Millennium Falcon. Yet true to previous form, it gives absolutely nothing away regarding the story. As this December marks the release of the third and final Hobbit movie, it leaves next December wide open for Star Wars to make an absolute killing at the box office.
For pretty much everything else, I’m indifferent to when a trailer is released – I’m happy to wait for the film to come out and to decide if it’s worth watching based on the plot synopsis. I’ll likely show keen interest when the next Bond film trailer is released, and I’ll reserve judgement for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Avengers: Age of Ultron until until we see a bit more from both productions – I don’t need a trailer to know I’ll be seeing both of them regardless. More recently I had a quick look at the trailer for Hardcore last week, a film due in 2015 starring Sharlto Copley and shot entirely from the perspective of the protagonist. As a fan of both first person shooters and films, this one looks like it will be a lot of fun indeed, but only if it can maintain the same level of quality for a feature length running time. But then, if video games can get away with a compelling 6-8 hour campaign, surely a film can do just as well with an 80-90 minute running time?
