I’ve recently watched two trailers on apple.com/trailers that perfectly…PERFECTLY…embody, separately, the right way to market a film, and the wrong way to market a film. One of the films looks positively awful, and yet another could very well be awful as well. One of the films is a lock…let me stress this…a LOCK for a Razzie nomination next year. I don’t care if awards season is months and months away. It doesn’t matter. The other looks, if nothing else, intriguing. The trick, in both cases, is the marketing campaign. In the end, it might be the only thing that separates them…but it doesn’t matter.
They’re separate.
The first film is Bratz, which is apparently based on some line of toys. Now, we’re currently in the season for such things, with Transformers stomping all over the box office, but…Transformers were a really cool toy. This Bratz thing…well…it sure doesn’t…seem…cool. Either way, the trailer tells the story of four pretty high school girls who enter High School as a single unit, united and, by their own declaration…”BFF!” This, apparently, means Best Friends Forever or…something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iSP42unSYI
The problem is that, a an annoying, popular girl explains, the school is divided into a hoard of different cliques, a system that said annoying girl not only supports, but one that she installed herself. Well…the four girls initially put up a united front, but in time, they split up and wind up travelling in different, cliqular circles. The annoying girl is happy, the girls are estranged, and now we have set up and conflict. The girls feud. Said feud leads to a massive, lunch-throwing fight, which puts the four of them, predictably, in a single room, covered in spaghetti, and conteplating what they’ve lost.
Now…we have a turning point.
The girls decide to reassert their BFF-hood, and fight back against the the nasty, annoying, popular girl and her system of cliques. This leads to a confrontation, a sweet sixteen party, a talent show, victory over the evil girl who screams, in defeat, “Bratz!!!!” We have resolution.
We have, in two minutes and sixteen seconds, an entire film…set to Avril Levine, obviously. Even if I were a girl, fourteen, and breathtakingly dumb, I still wouldn’t feel the need to see the film, because I’ve just seen the entire thing. It’s everything that a trailer shouldn’t be. A trailer should tease. A trailer should entice. Think of a beautiful woman completely naked. Don’t get me wrong…that’s sexy. Now picture that same woman barely clad in a silk sheet that just barely conceals all of the parts of her that you can’t show on Television. American television, not Korean television, where as long as it’s not particularly reproductive and between your legs…it’s cool. Some might disagree, but I think that the second image is sexier, because what you can’t see and what you can’t touch is invariably more interesting and arousing than what you’ve seen, than what you’ve touched.
This movie, shit that it will be, holds nothing back in its ad campaign, and that, to me, is kind of like a girl who meets you and immediately takes off her clothes, climbs onto the bed, spreads her legs, and points to a drawer and tells you that there are condoms in there, as well as varying sex toys.
Sure, it’s easy…but…it’s just not that appealing, really.
So that’s Bratz, for you. A slut whom you met in a bar, drunk, who’s lying on her back, legs spread, and waiting for you to penetrate her with a Yoo-Hoo bottle. It’s directed by…someone…and it stars…some girls. Run to theaters right away, and maybe you can catch her before she gets chlamydia.
The other film whose trailer has recently caught my eye was that for an untitled project being produced by J.J. Abrams, the creater of Lost, who is on an absolute roll right now with Mission Impossible 3 being an AWFUL lot better than anyone might have figured, and with the aforementioned television epic rallying for an incredible third season, punctuated by one of the best and most talked about season finales on television in a long time. The film’s trailer was attached to Transformers, which, because of that film’s phenomenal success over the weekend, allowed to to be exposed to a wide audience, and to quickly become the most talked-about trailer in all of movie geekdom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMF_lohzglY
The film is directed by some guy named Matt Reeves and it has a completely no-name cast of not particularly recognizable faces, partying it up in an apartment in Manhattan. The main character, so we can assume, is about to head off to Japan for…whatever amount of time, and his friends are throwing him a surprise party. Suddenly, the building shakes, as if from an earthquake, accompanied by some kind of odd…animal noise. The next you know, the characters are on the roof, cracking jokes, when, suddenly, the skyline bursts open with a sudden, flaming explosion, leading to screams and panic and a hand held (the whole trailer is hand-held…a friend taping the party) jaunt down the stairs and out into the street where a man is screaming about something that’s alive.
Another explosion, and something comes flying into view from way up the street, getting larger, smashing a building, smashing cars, and coming to tumultuous rest in the street while some screams, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The object turns over, not far from the camera, and close enough for us to see what it is. It’s the head of the Statue of Liberty. Another, terrified, and tingle-enducing scream of “Oh my…”
You might notice that I haven’t mentioned a title. We don’t have one. Abrams hasn’t decided on, or just isn’t releasing a title. All that was on the screen was a release date: 01-18-08.
Fantastic trailer. One of the best in years. It shows us almost nothing. We get a little bit of character…and then we get just enough end of the world to make us ask…”What…the FUCK…was that?” No big names. No title. No plot, at least not explicitly. All we have are questions and, for me, a desire to see the film to find out what the hell it’s all about.
Bravo.
Perfect. A trailer is supposed to be a hook. It’s supposed to be soemthing that grabs ahold of you, and pulls you into a seat at the theater. That’s advertising…selling, in the case of movies, your absolute need to see what this is all about. That’s why the net is buzzing. That’s why joblo.com is creaming its collective pants. That’s why people all over the country…the ones who dig movies, anyway, are talking about a movie they don’t even have a title for.
This is a trailer. A little bit of plot. A little bit of character. The mere introduction of conflict. Certainly no resolution. Also…mercifully…no Avril.
Here’s to seeing how it all turns out on both ends. Maybe “Untitled” will be awful. Maybe it will be remake of Rollerball kind of awful. Maybe Bratz will surprise, or at least birth some hot new starlet destined to be the next coke-snorting, rehab-ditching, train wreck waiting to happen Lohan type.
Maybe. I just know that one of these movies, in two minutes or so, is off to a very big lead.
The Fortress of Solitude 