On the Image

“Long live the king.”

---

If movies are good (they are), then it follows that short movies made out of long movies are also good (they also are). Sometimes, even, these short movies can be better than the long movies that give them life.

This take is good, it is not controversial, and it holds up to scrutiny.

If you are feeling contentious and would like some empirical evidence, then look no further than the trailer for “Battle: Los Angeles,” the movie that Roger Ebert called “an insult to the words ‘science’ and ‘fiction,’ and to the hyphen in between them.”

How much credit does late composer Johann Johannson deserve for the gripping effectiveness of this short film? Perhaps all of it. But it is effective.

A movie trailer is a vessel, engineered with painstaking precision, intended to give its viewers a compelling reason to sit in a dark room for two hours and concentrate on a very large television screen. Many good trailers are imbued with an honest dose of the pathos, intrigue, comedy, or action of the feature that they’re previewing.

The best trailers—the ones that are good-as-heck—don’t stop at a dose. For example:

“True Grit,”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo-RDJb4W28

“Jackie,”

and “Alien.”

2018 has seen multiple trailers that should unequivocally qualify as being good-as-heck. For instance, here’s the first official trailer for the recently released “Mission Impossible: Fallout.”

This trailer is actually upsettingly good.

It begins with an ominous piano intro coupled with a villainous monologue that transitions into an up-tempo establishment of the narrative stakes and major players before bursting into what can only be described as a giant action sequence comprised entirely of many different action sequences, all percussively cut together to a hybridization of the series theme and Imagine Dragons’ “Friction” (unironically great as it is used here). Granted, it has the benefit of its source material being one of the decade’s best action movies, but all of its elements cohere and snowball into a breathtaking demonstration of momentum in film editing.

Just watch it again.

This trailer is good-as-heck, but it is not alone.

Enter, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”

If the trailer for “Mission Impossible: Fallout” is a fighter that delivers death via thousands of precise strikes, then the trailer for “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” is one that lives and dies by the haymaker.

One of the most interesting things about this trailer is not the fact that it escalates (that’s what trailers do), but the way that it does so. It begins unremarkably. Ominous words of mass extinction play over a smoke-storm that chases Millie Bobby Brown into a stairwell. Then there’s the Warner Brothers logo. “This movie looks bad,” you may think. That’s okay.

What happens next is an uncomfortable segue into an echoing arrangement of “Clair de Lune.” It is uncomfortable because you had already decided that this trailer is bad after seeing one incredibly abbreviated sequence, but “Clair de Lune” is good. Maybe this makes you angry. That’s okay.

Vera Farmiga is still talking but you don’t hear what she’s saying because you’re listening to “Clair de Lune.” Wait, Sally Hawkins is in this movie! Maybe you were too quick to judgment. But, just as you begin to wonder about the potential for a “Paddington” crossover into the Godzilla universe, the King of Monsters himself rises from the water. You see Kyle Chandler’s face, and, in it, you see your own. “I am Kyle Chandler, watching this magnificent beast,” you think.

That’s okay.

As soon as Godzilla looks skyward and becomes a big, terrifying volcano of blue fire, you’re allowed to stop thinking.

“Clair de Lune” crescendos to a peak while

The giant electric moth opens its wings.

The prehistoric dinosaur bird screams on a volcano just before

Kyle Chandler bellows, “You are out of your God-damned mind!”

And you think that you just might be.

The bass drum pounds with a jarring authority, and

The montage responds to each beat.

Millie Bobby Brown says, “You’re a monster.”

She’s an incredible actor, and

You wonder if she’s right.

Vera Farmiga tells you, “I’m sorry,” twice.

You’re not sure why,

Because you don’t remember what she was saying earlier.

But you know that it’s okay

Because this trailer is

Good-as-heck.

So you sit back and

Enjoy the rest of the ride.

 

Watch it again: