Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. There's a really cool trailer going around that I wanted to share. I ignored it the first couple times it popped up into my feed because I thought it was just people newly discovering an old trailer that we've all seen, but I eventually gave in and gave it a click.
As a film collector one of my crown jewels is a beautiful 35mm copy of the US theatrical Revenge of the Jedi trailer. It's rare, but it's been widely seen. What The Academy dug up was something different, a UK Revenge of the Jedi trailer (advertising a Christmas release that, of course, never happened) attached to re-release copies of Empire in 1982.
I want to share that trailer and then come back and talk a little about the long lost art of the teaser trailer.
That's a very cool relic of a time gone by. We don't often get great teasers anymore, but they were kind of the rule more than the exception at this time period. And that's not looking back with rose-colored glasses, either. The myth of a day when trailers didn't ruin the entire movie is bullshit. Watch most trailers from the '70s and you'll notice they're long and cover footage and plot points from all three acts.
But with the birth of the blockbuster there came a change in marketing strategy. Suddenly it wasn't the coolest thing to show the last shot of the film in the trailer. Instead they'd tease their upcoming audience pleasers.
These niche trailers are some of my personal favorite. You'd mostly get them for franchise sequels, but not always. The teasers for An American Werewolf in London and Escape From New York didn't have much name recognition to fall back on, but they were made nonetheless.
The instinct for marketing agencies to go all in on a trailer are strong. Their job is to get asses in seats, after all, so the idea of showing all the cool shit is a natural one. The problem is when people feel like they've seen the entire movie already they tend not to be as excited to go out and deal with the hassle cinema-going has turned into these days.
I'd love to see a return to the tease. In most cases the trailers you're going to see here weren't the only ones released, so you could still get away with this strategy today, especially considering how much of the franchise cinema we consume these days is dependent on already recognizing the brands.
Watch these teasers and I guarantee you'll be pumped to revisit these films. That's the power of less-is-more in action. Most of these are collage/montage style teasers and some (my favorites) are predominantly footage shot especially for the teaser. Let's take a trip down teaser memory lane, shall we?
That's not every example of a good teaser trailer, but it's the ones that jumped immediately to my mind. I'd kill for there to be a return to this kind of movie marketing. How great would an Episode VIII trailer be that just featured production art like they did with Ralph McQuarrie's work in that Empire teaser?
Anyway, thanks to The Academy for digging up that sweet Revenge of the Jedi trailer and starting this trip down memory lane. Oh, and in case you haven't seen it, be sure to check out the US Revenge of the Jedi trailer, too. It's pretty epic because it was so early many of the effects are rough. You see Luke with a blue lightsaber and Obi-Wan not yet ghostified!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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