Here's a trailer for a recent movie:
What with the horses and the cowboy hats and whatnot, they couldn't really hide the fact that this is a western. But rather than tailor the advertising to fans of the genre--who tend to be older, and alternately more and less sophisticated in their tastes than the average filmgoer--the studio went with a campaign designed to make this look like just another lame action movie, all flash cuts and thudding boom-boom-BOOM music. The "Coming Soon" slamming into your face is a particularly ridiculous touch.
This is a painfully typical modern trailer. It's just selling a movie, any movie, not this particular one. Nobody involved with this ad campaign cared about 3:10 To Yuma, nobody felt the need to position this film as something different, to advertise it on its own merits.
Or consider this:
An awful trailer--just the inclusion of Blind Melon's No Rain is enough to make any sensible person want to vomit--for one of the best movies of recent years. It gives you a sense of the movie's story arc, and reluctantly admits this is something more than just a routine road comedy. But it suggests this is some sort of feel-good dramedy, when in fact the comedy is much darker and the pain more raw than an audience might be led to expect.
Compare that to this trailer from 1974:
Okay, admittedly, this is one of my all-time favorite movies, and even if I'd never heard of it, it'd be easy to get me to the theater. Art Carney's the lead? Hey, I'd see anything he's in. Paul Mazursky? Yeah, I'll be there. An orange stripey kitty? Not only am I there, I already love it.
But this trailer wasn't designed for me. It actually coveys some sense of the movie it is advertising, captures its mixture of goofy comedy, practical realism and well-earned sentiment. The trailer appeals to me because the movie appeals to me; if you don't like the trailer, you wouldn't like the movie, either. It's not deceptive, positioning the movie as something it's not, nor does it make you think of a million other movies. Almost like they, you know, cared.
