In a world…where moviegoing isn’t what it once was and blockbusters run three hours…a great trailer gets audiences motivated to check out a film on opening weekend. But the very best previews are so much more than that: They hold up as short-form works of art in their own right.
Keep in mind, marketing pros get just two and a half minutes to grab your attention and make their pitch. A clumsy trailer can also ruin the experience, misrepresenting the movie and setting ticket buyers up for disappointment. These days, fans devour trailers online, watching ads for anticipated new franchise entries by the millions within the first 24 hours they hit the internet. Earlier this month, an impressive ad for the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto 6” game set new highs on YouTube.
The trailer for “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” led with a handful of jaw-dropping stunts, like the one where Tom Cruise races his motorcycle up to and eventually over the edge of a precipitous cliff (watch AV Squad’s trailer). And a pair of trailers for “Evil Dead Rise,” cut to a classic record player warbling “Que Sera Sera,” served up a nightmare-fuel montage of creepy sights from the spinoff (check out the all-audiences preview by MOCEAN, as well as Buddha Jones’ gorier red-band trailer).
Still, sequels, prequels and reboots have it relatively easy — their task is to convince fans that the movie will deliver on their preexisting excitement. By contrast, it’s infinitely harder to introduce audiences to an original film, which is why you won’t see AV Squad’s rad teaser for “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” on this list. The trick is distilling the selling points of an unfamiliar property (or, in the case of “Barbie,” a longstanding brand) into something concise enough to entice.
So, setting aside the finished product to consider each preview on its own merits, here are Variety’s picks for the year’s best trailers, according to chief film critic (and admitted trailer addict) Peter Debruge. Click the arrow on each photo to watch the trailer in question.
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They Cloned Tyrone – “Freaky” Trailer
Image Credit: PARRISH LEWIS/NETFLIX Who made it: GrandSon
Back in the day, practically every trailer used a voice-of-God narrator to summarize the plot (“In a world where…”). Lately, the trick is to convey what a movie’s about using clips and a minimum of on-screen text. Trouble is, “They Cloned Tyrone” boasts a crazy-complicated conspiracy theory much too elaborate to distill into two minutes, so the preview takes things in a different direction, focusing on the funky, funny vibe of Netflix’s stylish blaxploitation satire. The trailer’s structured around Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” remixed to match the tempo of the clips. But most essential for any comedy promo: It gets laughs and promises more where those came from.
How does the movie measure up? The trailer introduces a fresh filmmaking talent, and sure enough, the film reps a promising debut from “Creed II” screenwriter Juel Taylor. -
Air – “Flight” Trailer
Image Credit: Courtesy of Prime Who made it: Zealot
The job of a good trailer is to inspire people to see the movie. But sometimes, it’s also about informing those who will never get around to buying a ticket as to the film’s message (consider the classic trailer for Michael Mann’s “The Insider”). The “Air” preview achieves both those goals, getting audiences to reconsider the game-changing endorsement deal between Nike and then-rookie Michael Jordan, while also conveying how much fun Ben Affleck and friends had flashing back to that era (cue ’80s power ballad “Sister Christian”). A dumpy looking Matt Damon makes a long-shot bet, the outcome of which we all know. But the trailer convinces it’ll be an entertaining ride. “The shoe is just a shoe,” he says, “…until my son steps into it,” finishes Viola Davis.
How does the movie measure up? There’s so much more to the story than the trailer suggests, making for one of the year’s best crowd-pleasers -
The Creator – Teaser Trailer
Image Credit: Courtesy of 20th Century Studios Who made it: Wild Card Creative Group
These days, it seems like you can do practically anything with visual effects (soon enough, we’ll be saying the same of artificial intelligence). But truly visionary sci-fi movies are still few and far between. The thrill of witnessing something fresh — albeit a dystopian future with strong “Terminator” and “Blade Runner” vibes — drives the trailer for Gareth Edwards’ original robot war movie. So does a smart use of Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” which escalates in intensity as the spectacular battle footage builds in sync with the song’s crescendo. The teaser does a nice job of balancing large-scale blockbuster moments (including a percussive nuclear blast) with quieter, more “human” moments (including the big reveal, where we see the face of a young girl grafted onto a cyborg rig).
How does the movie measure up? Edwards is better at worldbuilding than he is at storytelling, and the trailer accurately emphasized the former. -
Oppenheimer – “Secrets” Trailer
Image Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Who made it: Trailer Park Group
Every year, each distributor is allowed one trailer that exceeds the standard 150-second runtime. It stands to reason that Universal would dedicate that honor to “Oppenheimer,” the Christopher Nolan tentpole it deemed so important, the studio erected a billboard featuring a countdown timer on S. La Cienega Blvd. more than a year before it opened. “This is a national emergency,” begins Trailer Park’s three-minute supercut, which brings breathless, race-against-time energy to the Manhattan Project portion of the film, alternating between awesome nuclear-fission imagery and punchy, apocalyptically self-important zingers, like Matt Damon spouting, “How about because this is the most important thing to happen in the history of the world?” Other trailers, like Inside Job’s two-minute “Lightmaker” spot, do a more accurate job of representing the whole film, but “Secrets” positioned “Oppenheimer” as the must-see, “most important” event movie of the summer.
How does the movie measure up? The trailer got millions to buy tickets to Nolan’s masterpiece, but may have skewed their expectations in the process, overrepresenting Emily Blunt’s role (as Oppie’s wife), while reducing the Robert Downey Jr. dimension to just two shots. -
Boogeyman – Trailer
Image Credit: 20th Century Studios Who made it: Trailer Park Group
Focusing on a child actor who sees more than the adults slyly echoed the campaigns for “Poltergeist” and “The Sixth Sense.” So, while Rob Savage made a PG-13 horror movie as generic as its title, the team at Trailer Park took what he’d shot and delivered a master class in cinematic tension. Relying on deep, black shadows and ominous sources of light — including a glowing ball that rolls under a little girl’s bed — the trailer plays on audiences’ deep-seated fear of the dark. If you caught this one in a movie theater (as opposed to on a computer screen), it was perversely easy to imagine some monster reaching out for you every time the screen goes black.
How does the movie measure up? The first minute — featuring a blinking red light and a “Hereditary”-style ceiling crawler — is scarier and more effective than the entire feature. -
Cocaine Bear – “Higher” Red-Band Trailer
Image Credit: Universal Who made it: Inside Job
Curiosity and skepticism were both sky-high when “Cocaine Bear” posters started popping up in movie theaters. While the title was been enough to sell most audiences on the movie’s twisted (very loosely “inspired by true events”) concept, the hella-wrong red-band trailer assured the film could deliver on its outrageous B-movie premise. An ambulance whoop kicks off the mayhem, as a pair o’ medics arrive at a blood-spattered park cabin, only to be mauled by the CG black bear inside. Leaning in to the R-rated mix of drugs and gore, the irreverent amuse bouche — cut to Duran Duran’s “White Lines” — serves up severed limbs and swearing kids, grizzled-looking ex-goodfella Ray Liotta and an off-the-wall shot of the bear leaping into the back of a speeding van.
How does the movie measure up? Alas, the joke plays best in trailer form. -
Saltburn – Teaser
Image Credit: Courtesy of Amazon Studios & MGM
Who made it: Grandson Creative
The less you know going in, the better — which is why these mysterious two minutes offer the perfect creative solution: Cut more like a music video, the dreamy montage gives you a feel for Emerald Fennell’s upper-crust arthouse satire, in which a wide-eyed boarding school lad (Barry Keoghan) is invited to a seductive classmate’s upper-class castle. While “The Pioneers” track isn’t actually in the film, M83’s remix of Bloc Party’s mid-2000s single proves an inspired choice to underscore an enigmatic selection of sexy, decadent images. The editing follows the beat, building to a homoerotic shot of Jacob Elordi, backlit and smoking, with his legs spread. Presenting the credits in colorful Gothic text is a nice touch, as the title reveals itself one letter at a time.
How does the movie measure up? It’s even wilder than advertised. -
Barbie – “Dawn” Teaser
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Who made it: Giaronomo
In theaters, it took audiences a few seconds to figure out the twist as Greta Gerwig orchestrated a clever riff on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in which a monster-sized Barbie takes the place of the Monolith. Young girls are seen playing with baby dolls, while narrator Helen Mirren explains how Mattel’s innovation made history. Cue the horn blasts of “Also sprach Zarathustra,” as those same girls smash their old dolls to bits. The giveaway: when the director’s name flashes in the familiar, neon-pink Barbie font. The teaser got a big laugh in theaters, positioning the film as both a comedy and a bona fide event movie. Fans flipped over just five seconds of hot-pink BarbieLand footage at the end.
How does the movie measure up? What seemed like a stand-alone marketing gag actually opens the movie. -
Beau Is Afraid – “Beyond” Trailer
Image Credit: A24 Who made it: AV Squad
Anyone watching this bewildering mix of clips — skillfully cut to Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stranger” — would be hard-pressed to summarize the plot of “Hereditary” director Ari Aster’s three-hour opus. By all appearances, the film seems to span the life of a stressed-out shut-in, played by a scabby faced Joaquin Phoenix, blurring dream-like scares (smashing through a glass door, motorboating by moonlight) with footage lifted from a surreal animated passage. How can it all fit in one film? The A24 logo is enough to get some folks’ hearts racing, immediately followed here by an unfamiliar “MW” symbol — hardly subliminal, but a subtle clue to one of the movie’s mysteries. (In its viral marketing efforts, the studio went so far as to create a LinkedIn page for the fictional company.)
How does the movie measure up? At three hours, it’s bloated, but every bit as creepy-surreal. -
Killers of the Flower Moon – “Money” Trailer
Image Credit: Courtesy of Apple Who made it: AV Squad
An overhead shot of an Osage powwow sets the tempo for a brutal, brilliant montage: striking oil, gun blasts and assorted white-man malfeasance timed to tribal drumbeats and chanting. Briefly sampling nearly every violent moment from the film, the trailer condenses an incredibly complex true crime story, which took Martin Scorsese no less than 3½ hours to tell, down to an efficient, pulse-racing 2½ minutes. Even those who don’t elect to watch the movie itself get the drift of this deep historical injustice, distilled down to a few well-chosen exchanges: the pathetic pickup scene, where a sleazy-looking Leonardo DiCaprio hits on Lily Gladstone; Robert De Niro enlisting the patsy in his plan; and Jessie Plemons showing up to investigate the murders.
How the movie measures up: Scorsese goes long. Like, really long. That’s one thing the tight, punchy trailer left out.
Peter Debruge
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