Think movie trailers have gotten too repetitive? Here’s the proof

By Joe Blevins | January 15, 2016 | 5:57pm

Aux Features Film

Think movie trailers have gotten too repetitive? Here’s the proof

Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Read our announcement | See the 10 Best Games of 2025 (So Far)

Perfect for online viewing and social media sharing, movie trailers have become more important than ever in the marketing and mythologizing of motion pictures. When skillfully done, they can even be works of art unto themselves. Unfortunately, due to their ubiquity, trailers have also started to feel predictable and overly familiar. Jack Nugent, host of the informative “Now You See It” web series, gets to the root of this situation in a video bluntly called “The Problem With Trailers.” This handy little guide points out that each trailer has four main goals to accomplish within a relatively short amount of time; the trouble arises when too many trailers choose the same methods for accomplishing those goals.

When people think about clichéd movie trailers, they’re probably imagining the ones with voice-of-God narrators intoning, “In a world…” But those kinds of trailers are largely a thing of the past, Nugent points out. That doesn’t mean movie trailers aren’t formulaic; they’re just following a slicker, more subtle formula. “These techniques have become so normal that they aren’t enough to make a trailer stand out anymore,” Nugent explains. “The vague dialogue, the over-the-top music—it’s very familiar to us.” Called out for specific ridicule is the practice of ending a with a line “so vague that it hardly makes any sense.” But there are still trailers that manage to dodge the clichés of the form. Here, Nugent points to the creative, rule-defying ads for American Sniper and Furious 7 as examples of movie trailers worth sharing.