Coming-attraction attractions: 24 movie trailers that function as standalone works of art | Film | Inventory | The A.V. Club
1. The Social Network (2010)
Movies have always had trouble conveying the drama, suspense, and excitement of the online universe, because there’s nothing less compelling than people clicking away on their keyboards, or virtual figures interacting in cyberspace à la Disclosure. But the trailer for David Fincher’s Facebook movie The Social Network—set to an eerie cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” performed by an all-girl Belgian choir—gets across the site’s extraordinary breadth in a rush of familiar images (photos, status updates, the “Add As Friend” button, et al.). For millions of users, the site has become so woven into the fabric of everyday life that its power is taken for granted, but the Social Network trailer is a bracing reminder of how Facebook has grown into a vast repository of personal thoughts and photos, and the central hub for a very modern concept of “connectedness.” And it all rests ironically on the rotten, contentious foundation of Ivy League whiz kids—chiefly Mark Zuckerberg, the “creep” in question—whose relationships dissolve as swiftly as users’ relationships are forged.
2. Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)
After seeing some of Pablo Ferro’s commercials in England—ads the Cuban-born animator built on stop-motion technology, quick-cut editing, and vivid typography—Stanley Kubrick contracted Ferro to employ similar techniques on the trailer for 1964’s Dr. Strangelove. As single-word title cards and more than 125 images (including subliminal photos of Kubrick himself) flash in stroboscopic succession to a soundtrack built on atonal xylophone accents and ominous explosions, Ferro creates a Cold War tension akin to Lyndon Johnson’s infamous “Daisy” ad from the same year. But Ferro subversively undercuts that anxiety with ironic snippets of out-of-context dialogue, hinting at Dr. Strangelove’s underlying themes of war as a symptom of the male libido. Then he has the title read in three different styles—as if the film were, respectively, a science-fiction B-movie, a lighthearted comedy, and a naughty sex romp—which masterfully encapsulates its satirical tone with just a few subtle shifts in inflection. Kubrick so liked the finished result that he hired Ferro to create the film’s opening sequence, which featured Ferro’s hand-drawn lettering over a slyly sexualized shot of B-52s refueling to the tune of “Try A Little Tenderness.” That absurdist sequence perfectly embodied Dr. Strangelove in the same way the preview did.
3. Psycho (1960)
A lot of major changes in cinema get attributed to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It signified crime dramas’ shift from noir-style fatalistic realism to modern psycho-killer narratives, it was the last of the great black-and-white thrillers, and it was the end of Hitchcock’s most fertile creative period. But it was also a master-stroke of marketing, mostly cooked up by Hitchcock himself: He suggested the “no one admitted after the start of the movie” policy, he kept a tight lid on his cast so they didn’t drop any spoilers, he refused to allow critics’ screenings, and he directed the movie’s now-famed trailer, in which he takes us on an uncharacteristically jolly tour of Bates Manor. In his distinctive dolorous voice, he gloats over little teasers for his murderous new effort, and eventually leads us to the bathroom of the motel, pulling back the shower curtain to reveal a screaming Janet Leigh. (Well, technically, Vera Miles, but everyone was too keyed up to notice.) His instincts paid off: The marketing campaign was a coup, and Psycho became a huge hit, largely because audiences got so excited about the wall of secrecy and the sinister hints in the lengthy trailer.
