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 Cliff Notes 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.
Mortal Kombat (1995)
If you were a teenage boy that attended even one sleepover between 1992 and 1995 chances are you played Mortal Kombat. I remember playing the Sega video game with friends on a Friday night into the wee hours of the morning, sleeping for a bit, then waking up and doing it all over again. So when a big screen adaptation of the popular game was slated for release in summer of 1995, it was a given that we’d line up to see it. Though the finished product was pretty lame, it stirs up better memories of my youth and friends that I haven’t forgotten about. This is probably more of a full fledged trailer but I’m including it here because it’s edited together like a teaser. I still have the soundtrack on cassette and always liked the final 30 seconds of the preview when the characters are introduced and the electronic head throbbing music kicks in.
Missed my previous teaser reviews? Check out my look at Alien, Misery, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Showgirls, Jurassic Park, Jaws 3D/Jaws: The Revenge, Total Recall, Halloween II: Season of the Witch, In the Line of Fire, The Game, Psycho (1998)