10 Movie Trailer Cliches Everyone Is Tired Of
9. Gushing Critical Praise Quotes
It often feels like film critics are tripping over themselves to gush about a film as enthusiastically as possible, perhaps to endear themselves to a movie's PR firm and hopefully get quoted on the marketing materials.
It's obviously a strategy that works, as movie trailers - especially for "prestige" films which have spent months on the festival circuit - love to include the most ostentatious critical pontifications possible.
The more flowery the praise the better, but also the more cringe-worthy. Nothing makes a film trailer seem more desperate than a critical quote which professes a movie or a performance to effectively be the second coming of Christ.
The moment a trailer bombards you with effusive pull quotes and promises that the lead actors are "transcendent", "mesmerising" and so on, it's time to be suspicious.
Examples: Back when 2016 political thriller Miss Sloane was hoping to net Jessica Chastain an Oscar, the trailer below featured the hilariously overwrought quote, "Chastain gives a thermo-nuclear performance." What does that even mean? Either way, she didn't even get nominated.
This wince-inducing trailer for Call Me By Your Name meanwhile extolled the film's "ravishing filmmaking and piercing wisdom" among other poetic objectives, effectively resembling a parody of a what an art-house movie trailer is supposed to be.