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The Ten Best Trailers I've Seen - #4
Gears of War
VERY HIGH-QUALITY VERSION DOWNLOAD (25 mb)
You know this one. Unless you were living in a cave last year, you likely saw this trailer on TV a few times for the Xbox 360 game Gears of War. An unbelievably successful trailer, it single-handedly propelled the song "Mad World" to number one in downloads at the iTunes music store. Insane. That's how good it is.
Money Shot: Easy to pin down. The whole thing is great, but it's definitely the "it's a very very...mad world" scene where the soldier starts shooting at the giant...locust bug thing. The terribly tragic, depressing mood that built up over the last 45 seconds perfectly culminates in that final scene...especially where the room (being lit only by the gunfire) goes black just as the bug monster attacks. Great timing. And with that I basically also discussed the ending too, so I'll skip that part later.
Musically: COMPLETELY what makes this trailer, with zero exaggeration. Is there a more sad, depressing, tragic song in existence than Michael Andrews and Gary Jules' cover of Mad World? After watching this, you'd probably say no. If you replaced the Mad World song with the actual scene sounds - sounds of combat, gunfire, explosions, deep gruff soldier voices, etc. - you'd have a boring, unimaginative war game trailer. (Example: the trailer for Call of Duty 4.) War game trailers are pretty much all the same, which is why the Gears of War trailer's creative, innovative approach instantly made it a classic.
Visually: Promotional CG work for the game, a long tradition of video games - looked amazing but obviously it wasn't what the actual game looks like when being played. Still, it looked nice and crisp, as expected for today's gaming platforms. One way the trailer graphics shine is in its lighting, such as when the soldier busts through the window and the entire room is black except for his glowing blue patches. A little impractical, but it looks cool. Also, when the hundreds of yellow glowing eyes and the giant metallic robot insect show up, it's also pretty creepy, much more because it's in the dark. The effect would be a lot less dramatic if it was in a sunny, open clearing.
(I urge you to download the super hi-res version I've linked at the top, because without it you might not be able to make this detail out (I missed it the first few times.) At the end, when the giant robot bug is about to attack, you see other bugs crawling out of the darkness behind it, smaller ones. But if you take a close look, they're not actually bugs - they're humans, with the same glowing yellow eyes as the big robot bug. Adds an extra level of creepiness to the whole thing. Zombies? Mind-controlled? Who knows.)
The Ending: See "Money Shot" section above!
Extras: This whole trailer fits under this category! Probably tops on my list of extraordinary features - no commentary. No game-centric stuff ("Rated #1 in Gaming Magazine X!") or cheesy movie commentary stuff ("When all mankind is dead, only one hope remains...") or anything like that. Nothing to detract from the perfect blend of video and music. You could almost argue that it's not a trailer, it's a music video. (Which ironically is what I see as one of the trailer's negative points, more on that later.)
Another small but not-insignificant element of this trailer is that it appeals to a broader audience than a typical video game trailer would. The attention this trailer got when it first hit the air was huge among virtually everyone who saw it, video game player or not, which is pretty impressive. But appealing to a wider audience has drawbacks too, such as leaving out information that gamers would want but non-gamers would grow bored/change the channel at. More on this later too.
The best summary of this trailer I have seen, which describes it perfectly, is a fictional self-reflection of what the soldier is thinking. His thoughts in the trailer go something like "The world is destroyed, everything is dead and broken and I'm all alone. It's hopeless, but I'm going to go down fighting." I love this idea. To me, it matches up exactly with everything in the trailer. Take for example, the look on the soldier's face at two different points. At first, when he's looking at the broken statue and hears something coming, he looks tough, mean, determined. He's not afraid of what's coming, he's annoyed at being interrupted! But later, when he looks up and sees the giant robot insect, and sees that's he's surrounded and thus pretty much doomed, the look on his face is very different. It's a mixture of dread and tired resignation. He's still determined, but he's not angry anymore or even surprised. He knows he's completely screwed, but he still refuses to just lie down and die. Take another look and hopefully you'll see what I mean.
The downsides to taking such an imaginative approach to a video game trailer is that this trailer, while being cinematically brilliant, says almost nothing about the game itself. Like I said earlier, it's more a music video than a game trailer. Did I appreciate this trailer? Hell yes. Did I watch it intently like the first dozen times it came on the TV? Hell yes. Did it make me want to go out and buy the game? Well, no. All I know is that it's a war game of some kind. I don't even know if it's a first-person shooting game, or a third-person one, or what. I know it's somewhat futuristic, and that there's giant metal/robot insects, and...well, that's about it. Multiplayer? In-game graphics? Load times? Blood & gore? Even something as standard as the release date? All unknown.
In the video game world, a trailer for a game is a lot like the art that is on the game case. It might look nice, it might be colorful and fancy, it might be downright terrible - it doesn't really matter. What matters is the game itself. In this sense, the trailer stinks.
In conclusion, it's still one of the best trailers I've ever seen, and probably the second-best video game trailer I can think of. It fails utterly when it comes to providing information, and if I had been someone expecting an informative trailer, maybe I would hate it. But when it comes to generating buzz and publicity, it knocks it out of the park.
[posted by Rades at 8:03 AM] LINK ||
Gears of War
VERY HIGH-QUALITY VERSION DOWNLOAD (25 mb)
You know this one. Unless you were living in a cave last year, you likely saw this trailer on TV a few times for the Xbox 360 game Gears of War. An unbelievably successful trailer, it single-handedly propelled the song "Mad World" to number one in downloads at the iTunes music store. Insane. That's how good it is.
Money Shot: Easy to pin down. The whole thing is great, but it's definitely the "it's a very very...mad world" scene where the soldier starts shooting at the giant...locust bug thing. The terribly tragic, depressing mood that built up over the last 45 seconds perfectly culminates in that final scene...especially where the room (being lit only by the gunfire) goes black just as the bug monster attacks. Great timing. And with that I basically also discussed the ending too, so I'll skip that part later.
Musically: COMPLETELY what makes this trailer, with zero exaggeration. Is there a more sad, depressing, tragic song in existence than Michael Andrews and Gary Jules' cover of Mad World? After watching this, you'd probably say no. If you replaced the Mad World song with the actual scene sounds - sounds of combat, gunfire, explosions, deep gruff soldier voices, etc. - you'd have a boring, unimaginative war game trailer. (Example: the trailer for Call of Duty 4.) War game trailers are pretty much all the same, which is why the Gears of War trailer's creative, innovative approach instantly made it a classic.
Visually: Promotional CG work for the game, a long tradition of video games - looked amazing but obviously it wasn't what the actual game looks like when being played. Still, it looked nice and crisp, as expected for today's gaming platforms. One way the trailer graphics shine is in its lighting, such as when the soldier busts through the window and the entire room is black except for his glowing blue patches. A little impractical, but it looks cool. Also, when the hundreds of yellow glowing eyes and the giant metallic robot insect show up, it's also pretty creepy, much more because it's in the dark. The effect would be a lot less dramatic if it was in a sunny, open clearing.
(I urge you to download the super hi-res version I've linked at the top, because without it you might not be able to make this detail out (I missed it the first few times.) At the end, when the giant robot bug is about to attack, you see other bugs crawling out of the darkness behind it, smaller ones. But if you take a close look, they're not actually bugs - they're humans, with the same glowing yellow eyes as the big robot bug. Adds an extra level of creepiness to the whole thing. Zombies? Mind-controlled? Who knows.)
The Ending: See "Money Shot" section above!
Extras: This whole trailer fits under this category! Probably tops on my list of extraordinary features - no commentary. No game-centric stuff ("Rated #1 in Gaming Magazine X!") or cheesy movie commentary stuff ("When all mankind is dead, only one hope remains...") or anything like that. Nothing to detract from the perfect blend of video and music. You could almost argue that it's not a trailer, it's a music video. (Which ironically is what I see as one of the trailer's negative points, more on that later.)
Another small but not-insignificant element of this trailer is that it appeals to a broader audience than a typical video game trailer would. The attention this trailer got when it first hit the air was huge among virtually everyone who saw it, video game player or not, which is pretty impressive. But appealing to a wider audience has drawbacks too, such as leaving out information that gamers would want but non-gamers would grow bored/change the channel at. More on this later too.
The best summary of this trailer I have seen, which describes it perfectly, is a fictional self-reflection of what the soldier is thinking. His thoughts in the trailer go something like "The world is destroyed, everything is dead and broken and I'm all alone. It's hopeless, but I'm going to go down fighting." I love this idea. To me, it matches up exactly with everything in the trailer. Take for example, the look on the soldier's face at two different points. At first, when he's looking at the broken statue and hears something coming, he looks tough, mean, determined. He's not afraid of what's coming, he's annoyed at being interrupted! But later, when he looks up and sees the giant robot insect, and sees that's he's surrounded and thus pretty much doomed, the look on his face is very different. It's a mixture of dread and tired resignation. He's still determined, but he's not angry anymore or even surprised. He knows he's completely screwed, but he still refuses to just lie down and die. Take another look and hopefully you'll see what I mean.
The downsides to taking such an imaginative approach to a video game trailer is that this trailer, while being cinematically brilliant, says almost nothing about the game itself. Like I said earlier, it's more a music video than a game trailer. Did I appreciate this trailer? Hell yes. Did I watch it intently like the first dozen times it came on the TV? Hell yes. Did it make me want to go out and buy the game? Well, no. All I know is that it's a war game of some kind. I don't even know if it's a first-person shooting game, or a third-person one, or what. I know it's somewhat futuristic, and that there's giant metal/robot insects, and...well, that's about it. Multiplayer? In-game graphics? Load times? Blood & gore? Even something as standard as the release date? All unknown.
In the video game world, a trailer for a game is a lot like the art that is on the game case. It might look nice, it might be colorful and fancy, it might be downright terrible - it doesn't really matter. What matters is the game itself. In this sense, the trailer stinks.
In conclusion, it's still one of the best trailers I've ever seen, and probably the second-best video game trailer I can think of. It fails utterly when it comes to providing information, and if I had been someone expecting an informative trailer, maybe I would hate it. But when it comes to generating buzz and publicity, it knocks it out of the park.
[posted by Rades at 8:03 AM] LINK ||