hello and happy hanukkah to you!
there was a time when i watched a lot of trailers and even rewatched em’ on youtube, back when the site felt newfangled. with streaming, i’m more and more willing to believe that a movie’s poster is doing a good enough job of communicating its film’s deal to me. today i want to take a moment to reminisce on some brilliant ol’ trailers and the movies that they represent.
i was in the ninth grade when project x was released and i saw it twice in theaters. twice! these were not passive viewings, the movie theater was on the exact opposite side of town from my house, and i paid for my ticket both times, so there was some real effort involved. i remember being freshly 14 and feeling anxious for this movie’s arrival after first viewing the trailer.
project x feels like todd phillips really wanted to direct a music video, believed himself to be above it, but just couldn’t move on from the idea. the movie is about three seniors who decide to throw a party to make themselves look cool. as you might imagine, things get out of hand, and eventually some guy with a flamethrower shows up. the movie is so vigilant in its ridiculousness that none of the bizarre shit that happens is even fun to watch, it all just feels expected.
if memory serves, the scene in the trailer of thomas apologizing to his parents via video is 90% of the emotion that project x contains. yet, thanks to editing magic, the trailer manages to make the movie seem somewhat compelling.
this trailer is a bit of an outlier on the list because we actually get a solid idea of what is going to happen in the movie — or at least i think we do. i’ve never actually seen charlie bartlett, but the trailer is burned into my brain because it would play before the menu on my juno DVD. in my head i think of it as a really great movie and i’m too nervous that if i sit down and watch it i’ll ruin that image.
the most classic trailer element of the charlie bartlett trailer is its quick cuts of every character saying the same thing: “Charlie Bartlett.” “Charlie Bartlett?” “Charlie Bartlett!” I feel like this has some kind of hypnotic effect, making viewers automatically a bit more intrigued in whatever's being presented.
this entire movie gets off on two things: the fact that the main character's name is baby and the fact that baby’s obsessed with his lil playlists. because these elements feel a bit novel when you’re first presented with them — compared to after you’ve paid $20 for a ticket to view this story and you’re in a dark room preparing to stare at these characters on a giant screen for an hour and fifty-five minutes — you can care a little less about its tired orphan plot. for the two minutes and 30 seconds of the trailer, ansel elgort wearing those earbuds and being named baby is enough.
another movie trailer that felt very important when i was in high school, before we knew what leonardo dicaprio would come to represent.* i’m going to drop the bombshell opinion† that i find the book The Great Gatsby incoherent/boring (though a lot of the sentences are beautiful independently). i feel the same way about this adaptation, but i think the trailer allows us to indulge in the beautiful costumes and set design without committing too much to the story. to this day i get the line “i wish i’d done everything on earth with you” stuck in my head like it’s a song lyric.
*only dating women under the age of 25
†reveal that i’m an idiot
ps i think nick and norah’s infinite playlist wins the award for most memorable movie poster/least memorable movie.