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The Ten Best Trailers I've Seen - #5
The Prestige
This is a phenomenal trailer, and would probably rank at least in the top 3 if not for one small detail...it's nearly all complete lies. Infuriating, rage-evoking lies.
Money Shot: This one isn't a single scene, but instead I would say the Big Moment of the trailer starts when Michael Caine says the bit about "And you see something shocking you've never seen before." The line spoken immediately afterward just amps up the suspense and dramatic anticipation (the "Real magic!" line), and when the girl says "I know what you really are!" it just confirms that feeling that's been slowly throughout the trailer so far...that Christian Bale isn't just doing stage magic...he's got some dark, evil secret. Awesome, shiver-inducing moment. It doesn't hurt that every single clip of Bale has him looking sinister, mysterious, or both.
Musically: Simple but effective. It's not really music as it is just background...sounds. Very ominous, dark and creepy, just like the premise of the movie. It's very tense. Rapid notes (like in a horror movie), then moments of silence that are broken by sudden startling bursts of sound. My favorite part is at the "Now you're looking for the secret" scene, where it's just silence, then quick bursts of suspenseful music (paralleling with the flashing light in the video).
Visually: I never realized until I was examining it closely, but this trailer has like a million clips. The scene switches about every half second! I guess this lets them cram in more intriguing scenes, but just seemed weird. Anyways, visually the trailer is once again, dark and ominous. So it's very suitable. Caine's speech allows the background video clips to really shine, but that's more of a combination of the two (or "Extra" feature) so more on that later. The scene where Bale touches the light on the ground and suddenly all the lights in the field light up looks very cool. Probably my favorite visual moment, partially because I think it looks great, and partially because it's tough to pick out any other individual scenes, since they're all clipped at like half a second long.
The Ending: "Abracadabra"...Hugh Jackman panicking and drowning...and Bale's "Secrets are my life" make this ending chillingly superb. It's suspenseful, it adds to Bale's mysterious character, and it shows that it's a deadly serious plot. In short, it takes everything that's been established thus far and slams it home. Great ending.
Extras: The stage magician theme of the trailer hooks you right away and keeps you intrigued. Michael Caine's voiceover has the perfect level of mystique, and it matches up perfectly with the ominous visuals. It's only the combination of the two together that makes them this effective; if Caine was just saying his spiel to some kids or something, or if the visuals were just set to a fast-paced musical montage, it would be very blah and routine. But overlaying them makes it way more effective, since Caine's harmless speech serves as a cruelly ironic parallel to the two magicians' lives. How it ends, with the "And you seen something shocking you've never seen before" completely made me think, when I first saw it, that it signified Jackman finally learning of Bale's secret, and then turning in dread as Bale, disguise discarded, confronts him. Sadly, I was completely wrong. Because this trailer LIES!
Here's where my opinion goes from top-notch to ass-downwards. Quite often trailers will cut some corners to make it flow better. You know what I mean...clipping one person's sentence to follow another to create a phony conversation, or maybe cutting out some parts of a sentence to get a shorter, more oomph-packed line. That kind of thing. One example of this I can think of is for Spider-Man 2. There's a scene in the trailer where Peter and Aunt May are in the hospital. Aunt May says "You do too much, you're not Superman you know!" and it's a funny, cute scene. In the actual movie, she says "You do too much", then some other junk, and then "You're not Superman, you know." So they cheated a little, but it's minor and doesn't change anything, so that's fine. Plus, it's done for a clear reason - to play off the obvious irony. This kind of cheating is fine.
This is NOT the case with the Prestige. I was grossly disappointed when I learned that essentially the whole thing is clipped and edited to present drastically fake impressions. Keep in mind that spoilers will follow.
Probably my biggest complaint is that I completely, 100% believed that Bale had some dark, horrible secret that was allowing him to do this magic. His "big trick" that they're going to remember him for. "It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen." "Real magic!" "I know what you really are!" All lies. Oh, he has a secret, but it's not dark, or supernatural, or even believable for that matter. It's just stupid.
So that's misleading, which is bad already. But they also edit clips to create non-existent conversations and situations. Here's two glaringly offending examples:
Jackman: I need to know how he does it.
Caine: He has no trick, it's real!
Clearly Jackman is talking about Bale's mysterious trick. So of course, we assume that Caine is saying that Bale has some big secret, right? WRONG! Caine is actually talking about...get ready for it...that old guy wearing the pink and green robes! Yeah! That guy! Who is onscreen for about a minute in the movie, and does nothing at all of importance! And to make matters even worse, the line is totally out of context. In the movie, Caine is actually not being ominous at all, he's just joking around with Bale/Jackman. That line is utterly meaningless.
Next, we have the Magical Lights scene in the snowy field. Bale and Jackman have been flashing back and forth for a bit now, and we know that Jackman is intensely curious as to how Bale does his crazy, trick-less magic. When Caine says "The magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary," we see two men. One of them touches the light, and all the other lights "magically" light up. It then shows Jackman, looking shocked, so naturally we assume that the other one is Bale...right? I mean, Caine's words were obviously referring to Bale's strange and mysterious abilities, right? Nope! It's just some other dude. Oh, and it wasn't magic. It was just an electrical circuit. Yes, that's right, what seemed like the only real magic shown in the trailer is just a minor, inconsequential scene in the movie. It makes me want to stab the movie company in the face with a pitchfork.
Now, I hated the movie. I'm not even saying the movie is bad in itself...it might be decent. But the trailer absolutely RUINED the movie for me, because it was completely different than what I expected. I have a feeling I would have disliked the movie anyways (there are some pretty ridiculous moments in it), but what it REALLY is about is the terrible rivalry and loathing Bale and Jackman develop for each other...and Jackman doesn't want to know how Bale does it just for knowledge's sake, he wants to know because he's jealous and is trying to one-up Bale.
If I had known it was about two rival magicians, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But when I'm expecting actual magic, scary hidden secrets, lives at risk, electricity shooting around, and some guy who's seemingly made a deal with the devil...well, then those two guys performing tricks on stage kinda come off as a bit flat.
[posted by Rades at 8:19 PM] LINK ||
The Prestige
This is a phenomenal trailer, and would probably rank at least in the top 3 if not for one small detail...it's nearly all complete lies. Infuriating, rage-evoking lies.
Money Shot: This one isn't a single scene, but instead I would say the Big Moment of the trailer starts when Michael Caine says the bit about "And you see something shocking you've never seen before." The line spoken immediately afterward just amps up the suspense and dramatic anticipation (the "Real magic!" line), and when the girl says "I know what you really are!" it just confirms that feeling that's been slowly throughout the trailer so far...that Christian Bale isn't just doing stage magic...he's got some dark, evil secret. Awesome, shiver-inducing moment. It doesn't hurt that every single clip of Bale has him looking sinister, mysterious, or both.
Musically: Simple but effective. It's not really music as it is just background...sounds. Very ominous, dark and creepy, just like the premise of the movie. It's very tense. Rapid notes (like in a horror movie), then moments of silence that are broken by sudden startling bursts of sound. My favorite part is at the "Now you're looking for the secret" scene, where it's just silence, then quick bursts of suspenseful music (paralleling with the flashing light in the video).
Visually: I never realized until I was examining it closely, but this trailer has like a million clips. The scene switches about every half second! I guess this lets them cram in more intriguing scenes, but just seemed weird. Anyways, visually the trailer is once again, dark and ominous. So it's very suitable. Caine's speech allows the background video clips to really shine, but that's more of a combination of the two (or "Extra" feature) so more on that later. The scene where Bale touches the light on the ground and suddenly all the lights in the field light up looks very cool. Probably my favorite visual moment, partially because I think it looks great, and partially because it's tough to pick out any other individual scenes, since they're all clipped at like half a second long.
The Ending: "Abracadabra"...Hugh Jackman panicking and drowning...and Bale's "Secrets are my life" make this ending chillingly superb. It's suspenseful, it adds to Bale's mysterious character, and it shows that it's a deadly serious plot. In short, it takes everything that's been established thus far and slams it home. Great ending.
Extras: The stage magician theme of the trailer hooks you right away and keeps you intrigued. Michael Caine's voiceover has the perfect level of mystique, and it matches up perfectly with the ominous visuals. It's only the combination of the two together that makes them this effective; if Caine was just saying his spiel to some kids or something, or if the visuals were just set to a fast-paced musical montage, it would be very blah and routine. But overlaying them makes it way more effective, since Caine's harmless speech serves as a cruelly ironic parallel to the two magicians' lives. How it ends, with the "And you seen something shocking you've never seen before" completely made me think, when I first saw it, that it signified Jackman finally learning of Bale's secret, and then turning in dread as Bale, disguise discarded, confronts him. Sadly, I was completely wrong. Because this trailer LIES!
Here's where my opinion goes from top-notch to ass-downwards. Quite often trailers will cut some corners to make it flow better. You know what I mean...clipping one person's sentence to follow another to create a phony conversation, or maybe cutting out some parts of a sentence to get a shorter, more oomph-packed line. That kind of thing. One example of this I can think of is for Spider-Man 2. There's a scene in the trailer where Peter and Aunt May are in the hospital. Aunt May says "You do too much, you're not Superman you know!" and it's a funny, cute scene. In the actual movie, she says "You do too much", then some other junk, and then "You're not Superman, you know." So they cheated a little, but it's minor and doesn't change anything, so that's fine. Plus, it's done for a clear reason - to play off the obvious irony. This kind of cheating is fine.
This is NOT the case with the Prestige. I was grossly disappointed when I learned that essentially the whole thing is clipped and edited to present drastically fake impressions. Keep in mind that spoilers will follow.
Probably my biggest complaint is that I completely, 100% believed that Bale had some dark, horrible secret that was allowing him to do this magic. His "big trick" that they're going to remember him for. "It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen." "Real magic!" "I know what you really are!" All lies. Oh, he has a secret, but it's not dark, or supernatural, or even believable for that matter. It's just stupid.
So that's misleading, which is bad already. But they also edit clips to create non-existent conversations and situations. Here's two glaringly offending examples:
Jackman: I need to know how he does it.
Caine: He has no trick, it's real!
Clearly Jackman is talking about Bale's mysterious trick. So of course, we assume that Caine is saying that Bale has some big secret, right? WRONG! Caine is actually talking about...get ready for it...that old guy wearing the pink and green robes! Yeah! That guy! Who is onscreen for about a minute in the movie, and does nothing at all of importance! And to make matters even worse, the line is totally out of context. In the movie, Caine is actually not being ominous at all, he's just joking around with Bale/Jackman. That line is utterly meaningless.
Next, we have the Magical Lights scene in the snowy field. Bale and Jackman have been flashing back and forth for a bit now, and we know that Jackman is intensely curious as to how Bale does his crazy, trick-less magic. When Caine says "The magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary," we see two men. One of them touches the light, and all the other lights "magically" light up. It then shows Jackman, looking shocked, so naturally we assume that the other one is Bale...right? I mean, Caine's words were obviously referring to Bale's strange and mysterious abilities, right? Nope! It's just some other dude. Oh, and it wasn't magic. It was just an electrical circuit. Yes, that's right, what seemed like the only real magic shown in the trailer is just a minor, inconsequential scene in the movie. It makes me want to stab the movie company in the face with a pitchfork.
Now, I hated the movie. I'm not even saying the movie is bad in itself...it might be decent. But the trailer absolutely RUINED the movie for me, because it was completely different than what I expected. I have a feeling I would have disliked the movie anyways (there are some pretty ridiculous moments in it), but what it REALLY is about is the terrible rivalry and loathing Bale and Jackman develop for each other...and Jackman doesn't want to know how Bale does it just for knowledge's sake, he wants to know because he's jealous and is trying to one-up Bale.
If I had known it was about two rival magicians, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But when I'm expecting actual magic, scary hidden secrets, lives at risk, electricity shooting around, and some guy who's seemingly made a deal with the devil...well, then those two guys performing tricks on stage kinda come off as a bit flat.
[posted by Rades at 8:19 PM] LINK ||