25 Trailers That Are Better Than the Movie

Image via Complex Original

Director: Ridley Scott
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The hate lavished on Ridley Scott's Alien prequel, last year's Prometheus, made for some entertaining online reading material. As expected, the fanboys didn't take too kindly to Damon Lindelof's largely idiotic script, a confused mishmash of icky horror and weighty religious ideals that never congeal together. Before anybody actually saw the movie, however, expectations were through the roof thanks to the masterfully cut, incredibly moody and intense first Prometheus trailer.

It's a Master's class in how to put together a jolting preview for a big-deal genre picture: It first sets up the story without giving much away, then subtly introduces the threats, and then erupts into a frantic, dizzying, and effectively alarming barrage of horrific yet indecipherable imagery and wailing sirens. The kicker: a shot of Michael Fassbender's android, David, dropping the perfect line, "Big things have small beginnings."

The only scene in Scott's complete film that even comes close to matching the trailer's impact is when Noomi Rapace self-administers that insane C-section.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
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The trailer succeeds because it's the film you want. Spoiler alert! The Place Beyond the Pines is not what it appears to be. The trailer is edited in such a way that the viewer salivates over the promise of an epic that pits Ryan Gosling's tattooed bank robber, Luke Glanton, against Bradley Cooper's cop in shining armor, Avery Cross.

Over the drone of Suicide's "Che," you get an eyeful of Gosling. This is all you've ever wanted, you realize, the sound of the notorious New York No Wave band accompanying a veritable mountain of the finest Gosling affectation. Throw in a some stuff about robbing banks on a dirt bike, drama with women and newborns, and you've got a real boner-inducer for lovers of masculinity as ugly melodrama. That's the movie we wanted. But it's not the movie we got.

Director: Matt Reeves
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Remember that time you sat down to watch Michael Bay's first Transformers movie in theaters back in July 2007? Sodas in hand and cell phones turned off (right?), you were ready for alien robot mayhem when, suddenly, the first coming attraction blew you away.

Starting off as random footage of a surprise party for some clean-cut, metropolitan twenty-something, the footage turned grim as an explosion went off in the distance, all hell broke loose, and the Statue of Liberty's head came hurling down a street, as if something humongous just threw it like a baseball. And that was it—no movie title, no information whatsoever. Only the unease of not knowing what you just saw and the giddiness of acknowledging how amazing it was.

That's how ever-secretive producer J.J Abrams and his Bad Robot collective introduced the world to Cloverfield, their modern-day found-footage take on old-school monster flicks like Godzilla. The trailer was so audaciously awe-inspiring that, even though director Matt Reeves' film has enough good in it to highly recommend, Cloverfield never stood a chance of living up to its teaser's shrewdness.

Director: Hampton Fancher
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It's a trick that'll only work once, but it works. Ignore the fuzzy '90s lighting and shoddy production values and let the set-up reel you: Two people leaves a movie, The Minus Man, and, like you or me, begin talking about the film. They argue over possible readings of the film, speculate about motives, whatever whatever. Suddenly, it's morning. They've talked all night. The woman checks her watch and peels out of the conversation at a breakneck speed. Where's she going? Ooo, this is kind of working as suspense.

It's all worth it for the punchline. She's a lifeguard, and because she's been out talking about The Minus Man, she showed up late and guess what? Everyone in the pool has drowned.

The Minus Man killed them.

Director: Roland Emmerich
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A paraphrased reenactment of the first time we saw the trailer for Independence Day director Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC: "Whoa, check out those wooly mammoths! Damn, those huge birds look fierce! This looks like the craziest Encino Man prequel ever!" If only Emmerich called upon Brendan Fraser and Pauly Shore and left his dull star, Steven Strait, in the casting room. Not that Strait is completely to blame for 10,000 BC's awfulness—for all of the film's well-designed Cro-Magnon costumes and ferocious, computer-generated beasts, there's nothing resembling an actual story for viewers to latch onto.

Director: Roland Emmerich
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True story: The trailer for returning trailer champ Roland Emmerich's shameful and disastrous Godzilla reboot could have shown nothing more than star Matthew Broderick eating breakfast and it would have bested the actual movie. It's really that bad. As for the high-priced dud's initial teaser, though, Emmerich had a really good idea: Don't show the monster but still convey its gargantuan size.

Thus, there's a fisherman walking down a pier, ready for another day's worth of waterside relaxation as violent waves bubble up in the ocean, the wooden planks rip apart, and the fisherman hauls ass out of there as something appears to be rising from beneath the tide. Then, the beast's eye opens and reveals itself to be the size of golf cart. The point is clear: Godzilla is friggin' massive. He's also a silly pile of scaly CGI, but Emmerich wisely saved that damaging information for the movie.

Director: Marcus Nispel
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Nobody, particularly horror fans, really wanted a Friday the 13th remake—especially not one produced by Michael Bay and directed by the guy who removed the snuff-film-like grit from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and coated its 2003 remake in attractive gloss. But then Bay and his Platinum Dunes team did something clever: They packaged the film's full trailer to resemble that of the 1980 original.

To assure slasher movie purists that their Friday the 13th had a high body-count, they showed each victim right before he or she was about to tragically meet Jason Voorhees, cutting away before the carnage and counting up from one. It's the only thing about the conventionally bland Friday the 13th 2009 that honored its predecessor.

Director: Larry Charles
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Maybe it was just a yearning for another Borat. In hindsight, The Dictator's trailer should've never fooled us into thinking that Sacha Baron Cohen's latest fish-out-of-water comedy wasn't just a lazy attempt to milk his previous Borat/Bruno appeal. But unfortunately, dude tricked us. That bit where he shoots other racers with the starter gun? At the time, it was hilarious. Seeing Megan Fox in bed with Cohen and gamely receiving a Kardashian punchline? It brought to mind Borat's bit with Pamela Anderson.

Now, every time The Dictator airs on cable, we'll be reminded of that unbecoming vulnerability. Cohen's tale of a controversial foreign leader living in the U.S. with a fake identity is far too concerned with poop jokes, gags rooted in vaginas, and romantic comedy trappings. It's as if Cohen and his go-to director, Larry Charles, turned their brains off and unconsciously emulated everything that makes generic Hollywood comedies so infuriating.

Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
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It's OK to get a little meta in a "based on true events" movie's trailer. Sure, have your star (in this case, Milla Jovovich) speak directly into the camera on some Robert Stack/Unsolved Mysteries ish, telling viewers that what they're about to see was inspired by some real-life close encounters with otherworldly forces. That way, the curious ones who see the trailer will start Googling the real story, telling their friends, "See, aliens are real," and anticipating a movie that could finally prove, once and for all, that Fire in the Sky wasn't just poppycock.

Yes, we're referring to the gullible fools who found themselves wanting to stick a muzzle on The Fourth Kind director Olatunde Osunsanmi mouth every time he appeared in the movie to interview someone and distract audience members from the film's few decently unsettling found-footage-esque moments.

Director: McG
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You can't blame director McG for overloading the Terminator Salvation trailer with all of the film's strongest effects, visuals, and action. He was well aware of the fact that he's no James Cameron, but, rather, the guy who previously directed two Charlie's Angels movies and the gridiron drama We Are Marshall—not exactly great primers for orchestrating T-1000 battles.

For the trailer's purposes, it was either go for broke or keep listening to haters question his involvement with their beloved Terminator franchise, so, understandably, McG and his colleagues strung together a preview that momentarily made everyone forget that Terminator Salvation was directed by a guy who actually calls himself McG on a professional level. All it took to remind everyone of that was the experience of witnessing the film's sheer pointlessness firsthand.

Director: Jon Favreau
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In a few weeks, we'll see if Ben Kingsley brings it as Mandarin in Iron Man 3. If so, he'll thankfully remedy the biggest flaw of Robert Downey, Jr.'s superhero franchise: The villains always suck. In the first movie, it was Jeff Bridges' underused Obadiah Stane, who briefly turns himself into a bootleg Transformer. In Iron Man 2, Mickey Rourke—riding high on The Wrestler's award-season omnipresence—is mostly squandered as Ivan Vanko, disappearing for a large stretch of time before reemerging for the film's ineffective final battle.

But, boy, does he seem like a total badass in Iron Man 2's trailer, where Rourke is front and center—unlike in the movie, where he's one of several characters too many all getting overshadowed by Mr. Downey, Jr.

Director: David R. Ellis
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When you have a movie called Snakes on a Plane, it's best to not get too conceptual with the trailer. Just show an airplane, remind people that there's an actual movie star aboard (here, Samuel L. Jackson), and offer a few quick glimpses of the titular creepy-crawlies. The short and sweet preview for the late David R. Ellis' high-concept flick sticks to that approach quite well without overselling the tongue-in-cheek humor or exposing its goofy CGI snakes. A wise move, since, throughout its 105 minutes, Snakes on a Plane can only muster a few genuine cheers amidst juvenile comedy and lame-looking killer reptiles.

Director: Jonathan Liebesman
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In a poll of the new millennium's best all-around movie trailers, Battle: Los Angeles would be a strong contender for one of the top spots. It's all in that haunting, unshakable music: "Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Black," by Icelandic artist Jóhann Jóhannsson. Sounding as if it's being hummed by a melancholy robot choir, the track brilliantly complements the trailer's shots of normal Earthbound life getting viciously disrupted by unknown forces from outer spaces, lending Battle: Los Angeles a truly epic quality.

The problem: In a poll of the new millennium's shittiest movies, Battle: Los Angeles would, that's right, be a strong contender for one of the top spots. Jonathan Liebesman (who went on to direct the similarly rotten Wrath of the Titans) turns solid actors (Aaron Eckhart, Michael Pena) into unlikeable harbingers of abysmal dialogue, and all of its sci-fi spectacle reeks of been-here, seen-this mediocrity. They should have just let Jóhann Jóhannsson direct it.

Director: Niels Arden Oplev
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There are very few leading men in Hollywood whose presence alone will makes us want to see a movie. Colin Farrell definitely isn't one of them. Yet, when the first footage of his gritty action-thriller Dead Man Down premiered, for a second there we were, admittedly, intrigued.

Save for the sight of Terrence Howard hamming it up as the antagonist, Dead Man Down seemed to possess all the elements one seeks in a film of its kind: unbelievable, over-the-top action that, if nothing else, could go well with some overpriced popcorn and uncomfortable seats. In their full Dead Man Down context, however, those run-and-gun scenes got exposed as wannabe-Schwarzenegger-movie moments of directorial overcompensation.

Director: David S. Goyer
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Horror movie trailers are the easiest to manipulate. Take Dark Knight trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer's The Unborn, for example: In lieu of giving too much plot away, its impressively creepy preview relies heavily upon the film's nightmarish imagery, including the prerequisite "spooky ghost kid," a bug-nuts exorcism, an old man whose head twists like a soda cap, and what appears to be a white dog with a human face. None of it makes any sense, but, when it comes to horror trailers, the more disorienting things are, the better.

On the flip side, though, in an actual horror film, the less scary it is, the angrier genre fans will be once the end credits roll. And The Unborn, a catatonic exercise in clever ideas sank by inept execution, Goyer wastes the film's unnerving visuals through poor pacing and a lack of surprise. Because, yes, we've seen everything The Unborn has to offer in its trailer. The film blew its loads of terror before anyone actually saw it.

Director: Pete Travis
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The concept behind Vantage Point is a nifty one: Take a political assassination plot, fill it with more twists than Auntie Anne's, and present it with a Rashomon narrative structure. The trailer certainly sells it like that, too, promising double-crosses, breakneck energy, and the best kind of head-scratching. The only part of that on which director Peter Travis' film delivered was the head-scratching, as in, "How can this movie be so totally awful?" Blame it on the stiff acting (go back to that Lost island, Matthew Fox), the confusing story, and Travis' insistence on rewinding the footage to drive home the aforementioned Rashomon conceit.

Director: Sam Raimi
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Had Sam Raimi and the Sony Pictures team been completely honest, they would've used the entirety of Spider-Man 3's trailer giving fans a sample of Tobey Maguire's hilariously awful interpretation of "badass Peter Parker"—which actually closer resembles "punch-me-in-the-face-now Peter Parker." That way, Spidey supporters would've been sufficiently prepared for the altogether poor superhero sequel's most laughably bad sequence. Instead, Raimi focused more on the villainous Sandman's (Thomas Haden Church) CGI-heavy destruction and teasing the emergence of Venom.

Director: John Moore
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Anyone who bought a ticket to see A Good Day to Die Hard knew damn well what they were getting: nothing but shootouts, explosions, death-defying stunts, and Bruce Willis' snarky one-liners. And, to be fair, that's exactly what the sequel's narratively challenged director, John Moore, delivered—except that, in a bombastic slog that hopefully signaled the end of a once-awesome franchise, Willis can't muster the excitement needed to sell its artificial charms.

At least Moore and company were able to mask their star's lackadaisicalness in the brief but hard-hitting trailer. Not to mention, lure drooling male adolescents into the multiplex by showing a quick glimpse of gorgeous co-star Yulia Snigir hopping off a motorcycle, unzipping her coat, and walking around in a bra—an image that, sorry, isn't even in the actual movie. Sex sells, indeed.

Director: Stephen King (and there's no mistaking that)
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You want to know how to make a goddamn movie trailer? You get STEPHEN KING who's sold MORE BOOKS than any other LIVING WRITER and wears FLANNEL SHIRTS like a FREAKING LUMBERJACK. You get him COCAINE. He INHALES the COCAINE. Then you get a CAMERA, and YOU POINT IT AT HIM.

Then, Stephen King points at you, dear viewer, and says, "I'M GONNA SCARE THE HELL OUTTA YOU."

Done. Best trailer ever.

(Note: In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King described writing The Tommyknockers in 1986, the same year this film was released, as such: "I wrote The Tommyknockers...often working until midnight with my heart running at a hundred and thirty beats a minute and cotton swabs stuck up my nose to stem the coke-induced bleeding." See. We weren't exaggerating in the slightest.)

Directors: The Wachowski Brothers
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In 1999, the Wachowski siblings' groundbreaking sci-fi flick The Matrix took everyone by surprise, combining excellently choreographed fights with eye-popping effects and a compelling, complicated narrative. Come 2003, fans were more than ready for another trip into the film's alternate reality, and when the kickoff trailer for The Matrix Reloaded surfaced, excitement boiled over into insatiable enthusiasm.

Even today, it's a thrilling watch: The scope and action is impressive, from Keanu Reeves' Neo knuckling up against dozens of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) clones to that T2-like highway chase.

The problem with the movie itself, though, is that, well, the characters have to actually talk to one another in between those wham-bam sequences, and in those scenes of dreary prophetic chatter, The Matrix Reloaded crashes and burns.

Director: Zack Snyder
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Zack Snyder is a brave, brave man. Knowing full well that legions of graphic novel lovers were ready to castrate him for adapting Alan Moore's seminal anti-superhero tome Watchmen, the 300 director still forged ahead with one of the most ambitious comic book adaptations of all time. Utilizing his own professional background in advertising, Snyder put a lot of effort into Watchmen's first trailer, realizing that it could make or break the film before any skeptic even bother to buy a ticket.

That ad experience paid off tremendously. Watchmen's debut trailer—set to the marauding sounds of Smashing Pumpkins' "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning"—conveys the project's darkness and seriousness nicely; each iconic character, from Dr. Manhattan to Rorschach, gets his or her own (slow-motion) money shots, and the effects look grand.

It's a spot-on distillation of a grandiose book, and works perfect as it is—Snyder would've been wise to just stick with this and not bother trying to condense Moore's mini-series-ready text into the uneven 160-minute disappointment that ultimately hit theaters.

Director: Spike Jonze
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It's not fair. From the moment the viewer recognizes the chords for Arcade Fire's "Wake Up," it's a wrap. For a particular segment of the population—of which this writer is a member—the power of that song combined with the images from Maurice Sendak's classic children's book come alive...it's too much. I still get chills when I watch this trailer, even though I know the movie's a mess (except for the breakneck opening). Even if the project screamed Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze Present Urban Outfitters: The Movie, the trailer is still a thing to behold. All those match cuts of Max running! Those wild things, so big and hairy!

Some movies should have the duration of pop songs, should be pop songs. This is one of them.

Director: Zack Snyder
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Zack Snyder is a titan when it comes to trailer assemblage. The first teaser trailer for Snyder's Watchmen follow-up, Sucker Punch (his first piece of original, non-remake or non-adaptation material), is an electrifying shot of WTF-ness. Beautiful and provocatively dressed girls (Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish) fight Gatling-gun-firing giants with Samurai swords, take on Nazi zombies, fly jets into dragons, and maneuver around a seedy brothel.

It's a wet dream come to life for any comic book fan who takes break from reading the funny pages to play video games. Which also describes Sucker Punch the movie, and, unsurprisingly, the trailer's story-free explosions of visual grandeur are better served at 90 seconds than 110 minutes.

Director: Joseph Kosinski
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Based on its trailer alone, Tron: Legacy—Disney's pricey sequel to the influential 1982 sci-fi cult classic—appears to have, you know, characters you might actually give a damn about. Garrett Hedlund, playing the rebellious son of returning star Jeff Bridges, looks like a young man on a mission to find his pops, and the scope of the video-game-like world that he enters dazzles with its bright colors, CG wizardry, and cyberpunk energy.

The latter element is, sadly, all that first-time director Joseph Koskinski seemed to enjoy directing, since Tron: Legacy, while looking like a billion bucks, is a dull showcase of bland acting surrounded by loud noises and neon distractions.

Director: Todd Field
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Unlike some of the other examples discussed here, this is not a case of a disingenuous trailer that lured the viewer into a bad film. Little Children is a good movie. It just so happens to have a great trailer. The feature-length film, an adaptation of Tom Perotta's novel, is a sumptuously shot suburban potboiler with incredible performances and a wry tone. Neat.

The trailer is a brilliant short, anchored by the sound of a chugging train that augurs the disaster awaiting the adulterous couple at the film's center. All the most important elements of the story are here, and distilled to a blinding proof. Form's fucking content up against a laundry machine, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's all seamless and sexy and loud, and there's no terrible voice-over, precious few moments of dialogue, and just gorgeous shots of beautiful people making terrible decisions.