Special Series · The Art of the Tease(rs)
Jurassic Park (1993)
I have a serious problem with movie trailers lately. It seems like nearly every preview that’s released is about 2:30 minutes long and gives away almost every aspect of the movie, acting more like a CliffsNotes version of the movie being advertised rather than something to entice an audience into coming back and seeing the full product.
In this day and age where all aspects of a movie are fairly well known before an inch of footage is seen, the subtlety of a well-crafted “teaser” trailer is totally gone…and I miss it…I miss it a lot. So I decided to go back to some of the teaser trailers I fondly remember and, in a way, reintroduce them. Whether the actual movie was good or bad is neither here nor there…but pay attention to how each of these teasers work in their own special way to grab the attention of movie-goers.
The One-Sheet
Lobby Card
Plot: Billionaire John Hammond invites a team of experts to sign off on his new island theme park, where scientists have brought dinosaurs back to life using ancient DNA. When the park’s systems go down during a storm, the visitors have to survive the night.
Released: June 11, 1993
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough
Studio: Universal Pictures
Box office: $357.1 million domestic, $978.2 million worldwide
Trivia:
- The teaser used no footage from the film. It was a specially shot sequence of miners digging a mosquito out of amber, with a narrator explaining how dinosaur DNA could be recovered from its blood.
- The poster campaign kept things simple: the Jurassic Park logo was the only image, paired with the promise of an adventure 65 million years in the making.
The Taglines
An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making.
Why It Works
Here’s my favorite kind of teaser: one that shows no actual footage from the movie itself. I had all but forgotten this ad for 1993’s Jurassic Park, a clever intro to audiences not only that the movie was coming their way but in how the dinosaurs would be coming back to life in the first place. Though the movie did take ample time to explain the process, having the teaser give some info up front that there was some science behind it all couldn’t have hurt.
Now that the movie has spawned two (inferior) sequels, had an IMAX 3D re-release of its own, and is readying for an all-new adventure (Jurassic World) in 2015, it’s nice to be able to look back and see how Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking adventure first caught the eye of moviegoers.
Written by Joe Botten
Joe Botten is The MN Movie Man, a Twin Cities film critic writing spoiler-free reviews since 2012. He also writes for Loud and Clear Reviews, a Rotten Tomatoes approved site. Find him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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