9. The Empire Awakens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE3kkbPIsQg The way films are marketed today are very different from the trailers of yesteryear. Exciting though it is, you absolutely couldn't get away with shipping out that piecemeal The Force Awakens trailer to theatres back in the day. People wouldn't stand for it! It's just a collection of meaningless, contextless shots with a vaguely portentous voiceover by Gollum! Look, for example, at the
trailer for The Empire Strikes Back from 1979. It opens... well, it also opens with a bunch of contextless shots, but the rest are grouped according the main cast, they're action-packed, you get a loose sense of the narrative. To further highlight the difference between old and new school marketing, check out this trailer for Empire done in the style of The Force Awakens. Whilst the actual trailer used to advertise the best Star Wars film (no point arguing) was a sizzle reel that included some of the best bits, topped off with some voiceover at the end explaining what just happened, following the cues of The Force Awakens makes for 88 seconds of pretty cool shots that get cut off without the chance for any real understanding or fun, and a lot of them wind up being parts of the film that aren't actually that important.