Trailer Talk: Remakes Revisited

As you may recall, last week we talked a little about remakes. I'd like to thank everyone for their comments. Let me mention a couple things really quick...

I may have strange tastes in movies, I don't deny this. If you've read my writing at 7dp, you'd probably already have figured that one out actually. I like Keaunu Reeve's science fiction movies though. A Scanner Darkly, The Matrix, Bill & Ted, Constantine, and yes, Johnny Mnemonic.While I think his performance in Much Ado About Nothing could have been better, I am generally a Reeves fan. If anything, his presence in The Day The Earth Stood Still all but ensures that I will see it. And, Trav, I have seen Johnny Mnemonic, it's one of my favorite movies.

Now, I loved the original TDTESS. And, I'm pretty sure that the remake won't be as well regarded 50 years from now. I'm sure that no one really thought that the original would be either though. Time will be the judge of that.

I picked this movie for relevance more than anything. What I really wanted to get at was the difference in trailers over 50 years. They're just different. Maybe I was misleading with the title of the post, and by extension, the title of this one. While remakes are a popular topic amongst us, what's of more interest in the context of these articles is the differences not between the movies, but the differences in how they are marketed.

First, Earth vs The Flying Saucers from 1956:


And for comparison, 2007's Sunshine:


Sunshine might be an unfair choice as it's probably my favorite trailer of the past few years, but lets go with it all the same. Both serve to accomplish the same goal, to tell you enough about the movie to get you interested enough to hand your money over to see it. They both try to convince you that there is something exciting to be seen. The modern trailer is full of swelling music but not much narative. The older trailer is full of narrative as well as showing action and the effects. It feels like it tells a story of it's own. I just feel that it's a more interesting trailer to watch, regardless of the relative merits of the movie it promotes, but, as we established at the beginning, I have strange tastes.