10 Epic Movie Trailers That Set The Bar Too High
With this much hype, only disappointment can follow.
A film trailer is by far the most effective and efficient means of promotion for your upcoming production. Over countless decades, the act of delivering a small extract from the full movie has been a surefire way to build anticipation and translate it into high profits.
The techniques and method of presentation may have changed, but the intention remains the same: Get as many audiences as possible as excited as possible, in the hope they'll pay for a ticket on release. Some flicks have shown a bit too much of the narrative, others have stood out for being highly misleading. Arguably the most frustrating of all however is the overblown marketing material.
Indeed there are a number of films that created over-inflated expectations and subsequently failed to carry through into the final product. Every trailer is designed in some way to make its product as exciting and attractive as possible, but they can also damage success in the long run.
The following titles got audiences incredibly excited, but left them with a lacklustre release in return.
10. Prometheus
Ridley Scott's Alien stands as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, and it's also regarded as the film that built the director's reputation. After many years away from the genre, Scott announced his return to sci-fi and audiences were instantly excited.
A lot of this came down to the initial teaser trailer. Based on the aesthetic that made the 1979 classic so memorable, the teaser for Prometheus is a slow burn, the title letters slowly flashing on screen to a rising intensity of visuals and music.
As the danger grows more visceral, the soundtrack explodes into an echoing climax; a fantastic method of building suspense. It's a superb trailer that matches the creeping dread seen in Ridley's previous efforts.
In an effort to capture that same tone, audiences expected a flick on par with Alien and all the dread that came with it.
What we got in 2012 wasn't horrible, but it fell very short of the director's pedigree. Prometheus would raise more questions than it answered and subjected characters to some incredibly iffy moments. The constant back n' forth between prequel and quasi-prequel didn't help either, as it messed with fan expectations and timeline placement.