10 Classic Film Trailers That Show Us How It's Done

5. The Man Who Would Be King

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNb6SxXcD7g Along with telling us a little of the movie€™s story, a trailer must also establish the atmosphere and mood of the film, and that€™s where this trailer excels. John Huston, the legendary director of such films as The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, had wanted to make a film from this Rudyard Kipling story since the beginning of his career, but didn€™t get a chance to until toward the end of his career, in 1975. However, this film had been on his mind the whole time, and this trailer is so well-tooled toward this film that it€™s obvious that decades of planning were behind every element of this film. John Huston takes a page from another legendary filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock, and narrates the trailer himself. He does a perfect job of it; his old, wise voice makes him sound like a character right out of a Kipling story. In the first few seconds, he sets the trailer on the path it takes for the rest of its duration: emphasizing the size of this movie. He does so by telling us where this movie takes place: India, Afghanistan, and Kafirstan. The locations themselves carry a weight all their own: they evoke images of bustling marketplaces; marauding, sword-carrying bandits; epic journeys across mountain ranges. It€™s a wild land, a place not recommended for weak men. The trailer introduces us to two epic men who are able to take on the challenge of taming this land: Sean Connery and Michael Caine, who portray two former British soldiers who have become soldiers of fortune. These are men who, as we learn in the trailer, have helped build an empire, have tamed epic lands, have conquered peoples, and the like. In other words, like everything else in the film, these are larger-than-life men (this is explicitly stated in the trailer with Michael Caine saying, €œWe are not little men.€). Having exhausted all the adventure and treasure they can find in other places, they have come to the aforementioned lands to become rich as kings, or kings themselves, as the title implies. One of them, Connery, actually does become king (which is not a spoiler, as it€™s shown in the trailer here), but he finds that being king carries responsibilities and consequences he hadn€™t anticipated. Connery€™s downfall, and therefore the theme of the film, is large, as is everything else in the film: if we€™re destroyed, it won€™t be by outside forces; it€™ll be because of our darker sides: our animalistic urges and selfish desires. Everything about this film is huge: the stars, the setting, the story. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood just doesn€™t make anymore. That€™s another reason this trailer is fun: to visit an era of Hollywood history that is, unfortunately, gone forever.