We’re in a golden age for movie trailers—and it’s messing with our heads

Deciding which movies warrant a trip to the theater isn’t always easy. Lately, though, trailers seem to be making the choice even harder, and not for the reasons one might think.

The problem—if you could call it one—is an abundance of marketing riches across the entire cinematic spectrum. The trailer for A24’s new necromancy horror ">Bring Her Back is as dynamic as the one for Marvel’s retro romp, ">The Fantastic Four, not to mention DC’s new ">Superman reboot, Liam Neeson’s revival of ">The Naked Gun, and pretty much every other tentpole this year. Either the best summer movie season in decades is about to sweep through theaters or (more likely) trailers have simply gotten crazy good now, and it’s breaking our brains.

Even the trailers themselves seem to be aware that movie marketing is firing on all cylinders lately. The one for A24’s just-released ">Friendship ends with Tim Robinson, creator of cringetastic meme factory I Think You Should Leave, saying direct-to-camera, “There’s a new Marvel out that’s supposed to be nuts.” It’s a nod to his film’s status as counterprogramming for the Marvel blockbuster, Thunderbolts, which also arrived this month. After the Friendship trailer debuted in February, though, Marvel dropped a &t=34s">Thunderbolts trailer touting its cast’s connections to past A24 movies—like a metatextual slap-fight between Goliath and Indie Goliath.

Both sides win. The Friendship trailer quickly conveys how the unique tone of Robinson’s show will translate to film, while Thunderbolts’ trailers present it as an off-beat, low stakes side-quest in the Marvel world. How could anyone who’s even a little interested in either resist?  

Traditionally, trailers have followed a familiar cadence: Give the audience a hook, follow it up with some table-setting, and end on an escalation.  But these days, trailers feel more like a self-contained mini-movie than part of a pattern. Some trailers, like those for Superman and ">Final Destination: Bloodlines, spend a full minute anchored by a single tense scene that lures viewers in; others, like those for the latest ">Mission: Impossible and ">Conjuring movies, dangle visuals from previous entries in clever ways, centering franchise lore to remind audiences what they loved about the characters and worlds in the first place.

So how are trailer editors deciding which path to take? And how do they keep things from feeling stale? According to Erika Anaya, creative director at leading entertainment marketing agency Trailer Park, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to charting a trailer’s trajectory.

“It’s different for every single movie, regardless of genre or studio,” she says. “I would even say for something like a Marvel [film], you would think, ‘Oh, they pretty much have it down now,’ but it changes for every single one.”

The promotional push for a major movie generally includes a teaser trailer and two official trailers. (These days movies also often feature an assortment of online-only bonus clips.) The composition of these packages used to be more codified, though. A teaser was once strictly an enticing, elusive introduction—more TikTok-length than YouTube. A classic example is ">the teaser for The Shining, which showed nothing but a nightmarish deluge of blood pouring out  from a hotel elevator. While those kinds of teasers still exist—the new ">Naked Gun offers one extended gag—teasers can now be more comprehensive than trailers. The ">“teaser” for Thunderbolts lasted nearly three and a half minutes, giving viewers a lot to chew in for a first taste.

“It used to be very common for the first piece out of the gate to be an amuse-bouche teaser, followed by a second trailer that leaned more heavily into story,” Anaya says. “But that’s not really a standard practice anymore.”

Whatever their length or style, movie trailers sound better now, too. Or at least fresher. The era of slowed-down cover songs, starting with 2010’s "> The Social Network trailer and its ">haunting choral cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” finally seems to have tapered off. Now, studios are more likely to score a trailer with a bizarro version of a classic rock song that features new instrumentation alongside the classic vocal stems. This summer’s entries include a lithe EDM update of Madonna’s “Material Girl” for A24’s ">The Materialists, a dreamy twist on Queen’s “Under Pressure” in "> Thunderbolts, and an enhanced take on “Happy Together” by The Turtles for Neon’s horror flick "> Together. The infamous ">“braaam” noise popularized by ">the Inception trailer is also on the wane. An audio shorthand for epicness, the oft-used trailer sound appears to have fallen out of fashion somewhere between 2021’s Dune and last year’s Dune 2. (“I think a lot of trailer editors—and viewers—got tired of that particular sound effect,” Anaya adds.)

What might distinguish this season’s trailers most, though, is an intuitive command of how much to reveal and how much to hold back. While giving a flavor of a movie’s vibe can be just as important to a trailer as communicating the plot or flaunting some money-shot stunts, jokes, smooches, or death-traps, the amounts in each recipe are always in flux. The ">trailer for 2006’s cerebral drama, Little Children, starring Kate Winslet, is a tonal masterpiece that barely informs viewers what the film is actually about or what happens in it. A24 essentially cornered the market on this style of trailer in the 2010’s, with vibey, vague pieces like those for "> The Witch and "> Hereditary, and the studio’s trailer for ">Bring Her Back this summer takes a similar tact. Viewers will leave knowing only that the titular “Back” means “back from the dead”—and feeling supremely creeped out.

So, how do studios decide how much to give away in a trailer? According to Anaya, big-budget films often go through multiple rounds of audience testing for their trailers—and the more the creators lean on that research, the more they tend to reveal. Ironically, the same viewers who later complain in YouTube comments about “spoiler-filled” trailers may be the ones asking for more upfront during test screenings. But lately, the trend seems to be swinging the other way.

“A few years ago, it was more common to add more story, but I think there is a sense that we wanna leave something more, particularly for theatrical, for people to go and buy a ticket,” Anaya says. “So maybe that more old-school way of packing a trailer with too much information is starting to look like, ‘Is there a better way to do this?’ Can we intrigue them with less narrative, but enough to come through?”

Neon’s trailer for the upcoming ">Together, for instance, is a triumph of the delicate balance between vibes, plot, and money shots. It gives viewers just enough string to put together that stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco are a troubled couple thrust into a gnarly body-horror situation, without quite spelling out what that situation is, let alone what started it or how far it will go. Rather than a standout, though, this is starting to feel like the standard. 

This summer’s trailers seem to be finding the precise middle between the magic of mystery and the dopamine rush of Too Much—and it’s getting confusing. Every trailer seems to pitch its product with a beautiful line drive right down the plate, but the movies themselves can’t all be home runs. 

Will some of the moody, plot-light trailers ultimately translate to plodding, plot-free films? Will any of those that confidently reveal some of their best moments turn out to have held back nothing for the actual film? Judging by the solid start to the summer box office, these trailers are successfully making people flee their homes to find out.

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