Review Of 2016: The Half-Dozen Most Viewed Trailers Of 2016

Posted on January 7, 2017 Updated on January 7, 2017

Ah, the olden days. I remember when all this was fields, it wasn’t like this when I was a lad, you could get a racehorse and a speedboat for two shillings and sixpence, men were men, boys were small men and women were men with different dangly bits. But most importantly, in the olden days I used to write a film blog.

That, of course, was in the days before I became the regular reviewer on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s drive time show with the esteemed Chris Mann, started writing a column in the Cambridge News and found 1,000,001 other distractions, most of them watching films. In fact, I ended up watching films so much that I didn’t really have time to watch trailers, at least in the cinema.

I also feel that the trailer is becoming a lost art form. The gravelly voice man is now just the province of Honest Trailers, and trailers are now just a window for all of the best bits of the film, desperately trying to recruit you to the cinema where you’ll see them again with lots of boring, superficial context dragging them out to two hours or more.

The rise of internet advertising and the use of the Skip button has also seen another change to trailers when viewed online: the trailer trailer. Not to be confused with the teaser trailer, which is a shorter trailer released before the main trailer, or the trailer preview, where they release part of the trailer a few days before unveiling all of it in an attempt to induce a Pavlovian response from fanboys and girls worldwide, but where you get a trailer in five seconds with lots of rapid cuts in the even that your trailer is being used as an advert; this way, you get to see a trailer even if you click “Skip in…” when it counts down to zero. If you don’t, you get two trailers for the price of one. If you watch a trailer with a trailer trailer attached before watching the film it’s trailing, you can make yourself feel like you’re being sucked into a black hole where time is gradually dilating to the point of infinity. Or you can watch five minutes of a Transformers movie to achieve the same effect. But I digress. (Ah, how I’ve missed digressing in my blog again. But I digress from my digress. A digress digress, if you will. ANYway…)

Traditionally I would at this point pick out my six, or twelve favourite trailers of the year, but they’re all so much of a muchness I’ve struggled to find that many I’d even care about. I will pick out a favourite of the year before this is over, but as I’ve not blogged all year – apart from spewing out two brief flirtations at Oscar time – I think it would be useful to review what you’re actually getting from the big trailers these days.

Let’s take the six biggest trailers of 2016, coincidentally six of the seven biggest trailers ever, and see what we can learn from them about their films, and about the increasingly lost art of the trailer.

6. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (released December 3, 81 million views in 24 hours)

So this trailer is all about reassurance. You liked the first one, because it was very slightly different from all of those other Marvel movies, in that it was funnier and set off Earth and had a tree with a five word vocabulary and a weird throwback soundtrack. So the trailer is designed to reassure you that you’ll be getting all of this again this time round, by showing you a funny scene and some spaceships and the tree being cute and awesome and with a slightly different throwback soundtrack. It doesn’t actually show you any plot, but maybe that’s a good thing?

5. Transformers: The Last Knight (released December 5, 93.6 million views in 24 hours)

*types name of film into YouTube to find official trailer*

*wades through pages and pages of people reposting the trailer, trailer reactions and trailer breakdowns*

*notices that one of the trailer reaction videos has over half a million hits*

*wonders if I’m wasting my life*

*watches trailer*

*wonders why I even bothered asking that previous question when the answer is self-evident*

4. Captain America: Civil War (released March 10, 94.7 million views in 24 hours)

It’s another entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the thirteenth in fact, and the third with Captain America in the title. So this has to fight against the law of diminishing returns and convince you that you have to be sat in the cinema. But, rather than a plot driven trailer, this is all about the stakes. Stakes that bring back Bucky (who we’ve seen before), that show off six Avengers either sitting at tables looking serious or doing cool action sequences (who we’ve seen before), that show a new character that looks like some form of Panther in a black costume (that we don’t know about yet so it’s harder to care), that shows Captain America and Iron Man fighting (we’ve seen Avengers fighting lots of times before), that puts in a cool dialogue reference to the first Captain America movie (seen that before – check) and has an inordinate amount of things blowing up. I’m not even going to say it.

But wait – who’s that wall-crawling web-slinger? We haven’t seen him before, have we? Sigh.

3. Fifty Shades Darker (released September 13, 114 million views in 24 hours)

Fifty things I learned from the Fifty Shades Darker trailer:

1. There are, apparently, more than fifty shades of grey. Forget your Turtledove Grey or Light French Grey, we’re in Monument Grey and Forest Grey territory here, people.
2. Jamie Dornan’s back. So despite lots of stories about “disillusionment” and “creative friction”, looks like something called a “paycheck” won out.
3. So’s Dakota Johnson. Yes, this is the same as point two, I’m trying to make fifty points here, cut me some slack.
4. This is the official trailer, as opposed to the unofficial trailer. (Well, that trailer doesn’t make me want to watch the film any less, anyway.)
5. It’s made by Universal, who made $570 million dollars from a $40 million budget on the first one. Bet there were a lot of executives agonising about whether to greenlight this sequel…
6. It’s coming on Valentine’s Day. Because what could be better than a little bondage and misogyny for the most romantic holiday of them all?
7. We have to “forget the past”, i.e. “the first one was terrible but this will be better.”
8. It’s personally disappointing when someone doesn’t follow slipping on a black mask by saying “I’m Batman.”
9. There’s no way Ana could be Batman, though. Her mask is see-through. What use is that for a crime-fighting superhero?
10. Well, the characters are back together, so presumably something’s happened since the last film. Or will happen in this one. Guessing is fun.
11. The way to really tell someone you throw extravagant parties is with someone who breathes fire. Nothing less will do.
12. Apparently there is no limit to the number of slowed-down cover versions of “Crazy Right Now” you can cut a trailer to.
13. This trailer is not in order. Or some of it’s from a previous film. Look, I’ve tried really hard to forget it, OK?
14. If you’re really rich, you can install a shower big enough to host a whole rugby team, just in case you want the dramatic effect of taking your lover against the wall to have more theatre.
15. There’s fireworks. That’s probably symbolic.
16. Jamie Dornan can do more chin-ups than me, and by that I mean Jamie Dornan can do a chin-up.
17. After being stalked repeatedly by Christian, Ana is only mildly surprised when a stranger turns up in her flat unannounced while she’s sleeping, rather than freaking out and throwing things and calling the police.
18. Oh wait, it was her imagination, which is surely even more disturbing.
19. There’s another man on the scene, and he seems as much of a depressing manwaste as Christian.
20. Kim Basinger, if you walk into a room and then hold up your mask, it’s missing the point, we know who you are already.
21. Either there’s not much footage in this trailer, or Ana is practically living in that silver dress.
22. There’s a helicopter out of control, which is probably a metaphor as well.
23. There’s that imaginary woman again. Is this actually a horror movie? (Might be more interesting if it is.)
24. This version of Crazy In Love is performed by Miguel. That’s lovely. (I barely know who Beyoncé is, never mind Miguel. Getting old.)
25. It’s coming out on Valentine’s Day 2017, in case you were wondering which year it would be released based on the ambiguous card earlier that said Valentine’s Day but not the year.
26. James Foley is on directorial duties. He did Glengarry Glen Ross, and nothing else much good. This will go one of two ways.
27. Which means that Sam Taylor-Johnson has had a lucky escape this time.
28. Danny Elfman is once again composing. How I would love it if his score was closer to a Tim Burton score. Or just The Simpsons theme on a loop.
29. The screenplay is by Niall Leonard, who’s also written for Spender, Ballykissangel, Monarch Of The Glen and Wild At Heart. (All of which would have been livened up by some light spanking and dubious sex contracts.)
30. This also means that E.L. James didn’t get to write the screenplay, so we may be denied some of her usual zingers.
31. Somewhat unsurprisingly, I didn’t manage to find 50 things to mock in a two minute trailer, so I will complete the list with some of those actual E.L. James zingers from the book. Here’s hoping they make it into the film.
32. “His eyebrows widen in surprise.”
33. “I wasn’t aware we were fighting. I thought we were communicating…”
34. “Just smell that new car smell. This is even better than the Submissive Special … um, the A3.”
35. “Ah, Mr. Grey, your perpetually twitching palm. What are we going to do with that?”
36. “He’s like several different people in one body. Isn’t that a symptom of schizophrenia?” (No, it isn’t.)
37. “Not today. I was late getting in, and my boss is like an angry bear with a sore head and poison ivy up his ass.”
38. “Sooners rather than laters, baby.”
39. “My mother had a mantra: musical instrument, foreign language, martial art.”
40. “I’m talking about the heavy shit, Anastasia. You should see what I can do with a cane or a cat.”
41. “He smirks and cranks his glorious smile up another notch so it’s in full HD IMAX.”
42. “Yes, I’ll get wrong sometimes – I’ll make mistakes, but I have to learn.”
43. “What! Sex in the car? Can’t we just do it on the cool marble of the lobby floor…please?”
44. “What a time to have a brain-to-mouth filter malfunction.”
45. “My subconscious has her arms crossed and is wearing Burberry check . . . jeez.”
46. “You are going to unman me, Ana … You — take me. Ana, touch me … please.”
47. After a while, he sighs, and in a soft voice he says, “I had a horrific childhood. One of the crack whore’s pimps . . .” His voice trails off, and his body tenses as he recalls some unimaginable horror. “I can remember that,” he whispers, shuddering.
48. My inner goddess is doing a triple axel dismount off the uneven bars, and abruptly my mouth is dry.
49. I take a deep breath and head back out into the club. I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t gone panty less before.
50. Oh! Hesitantly I pull the drawer open, not taking my eyes off his beautiful but rather smug face. Inside there are an assortment of metal items and some clothespins. Clothespins! I pick up a large metal clip-like device. “Genital clamp,” Christian says.

2. Beauty And The Beast (released November 14, 127.6 million views in 24 hours)

So you know that live action Disney film based on Cinderella that made a lot of money that wasn’t all that much like the animated Cinderella? And that live action The Jungle Book film based on The Jungle book that was a lot more like the animated The Jungle Book that made a lot more money? Well here comes a live action Disney film based on Beauty And The Beast which is a tragedy starring Danny De Vito as Beauty and Jennifer Lawrence as the voice of The Beast, who will be portrayed by a sock puppet. Only kidding, its EXACTLY THE SAME as the animated Beauty And The Beast but with added Emma Watson, so it’s probably a bit more modern and feminist. Ker-CHING!

1. The Fate Of The Furious (released December 11, 139 million views in 24 hours)

I would have watched this trailer more closely, but after their amazing F-eight pun I was trying to thing up puns for the inevitable next film. Maybe one with dogs? (The Canine And The Furious, obvs.) One based on proverbs? (A Furious Stitch In Time Saves Nine?) One where the cars give up driving on roads completely and dispense with the laws of physics all together? (On Cloud Nine With The Furious?) Or maybe just The AssiNine And The Furious? Anyway, this has a chase on ice, so apparently we’ve learned nothing from Die Another Day. If this has bad CGI surfers, invisible cars and any kind of reference to Madonna then I’m officially bailing.

Well, that’s it, the best trailers of 2016, as judged by the number of times people with low standards have watched them forty times in the first hour and a half of their upload. Which only leaves me to pick out my favourite trailer of the year.

The Best Trailer Of 2016 – Dunkirk

Simplicity is the key here. Just enough to give you a flavour, and then the construction of the shot where the soldiers react closer to the camera, then further away, felt a world away from the trailers for the generic blockbusters I’ve just been dissecting. After the disappointment of Interstellar, this got me excited for Christopher Nolan’s next immediately, and for its instant power and effect, this gets my vote for the best trailer of 2016.

Previous years:

The 12 Best Trailers Of 2015 WINNER – Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The 12 Best Trailers Of 2014 WINNER – The Babadook

The 12 Best Trailers Of 2013 WINNER – Gravity

The 12 Best Trailers Of 2012 WINNER – The Imposter

The Dozen Best Trailers Of 2011 WINNER – Submarine

The Half Dozen Best Trailers Of 2010 WINNER – The Social Network