Outstanding teaser trailer for ‘Up In The Air’

Okay, so what makes this the best movie trailer I’ve seen in recent memory?

The short answer is: everything. It’s perfectly edited, so smooth, all the different components working together so that it’s completely epic and stirring and yet doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard.

First of all, the music. It’s so subtle, so pretty, and so fitting to lie underneath Clooney’s monologue. The track is “Genova” by Charles Atlas (I already bought it on iTunes, ha). It feels a lot like one of my other favorite instrumental piano songs, “Cloud Watching” by Lol Hammond.

Then we get Clooney’s speech—specifically what he is saying is so original (the backpack anecdote), so engrossing and convincing. Interwoven are specific images from the film, brief moments that make this look like a real film of human relationships—a film that will probably be pretty sad, but also uplifting. And all set to that goddamn pretty music.

Finally, the clincher: the lack of plot revealed by the trailer. My major problem with movie trailers for years now has been just how much they reveal about a movie—what happened to being a bit mysterious? Keep some cards close to the chest. But no; coming attractions now are, for the most part, insanely long, and once it ends you feel as though you’ve already seen the movie. This trailer for Sorority Row is a great example; it gives you the whole plot of the movie, with only the exception of the final twist (i.e. Who is the killer?). It even contains, all in the trailer, pretty much the entire first scene of the movie. This one, though, gives you no concrete idea of what the film is about, other than that it clearly involves a lot of airplane travel, and that the hot chick from The Departed is in the mix as Clooney’s love interest.

The entire trailer feels like the American Beauty scene with the plastic bag floating around in the breeze— you know what they’re doing to you, but you don’t care, it’s working, you’re falling for it. You suspend your natural tendency toward skepticism.

As a post about the teaser trailer on the web site InContention.com posited, “It’s a beautiful piece that really captures the tone and spirit of the film. I generally prefer trailers put together by filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson does it a lot) because they tend to be free of the usual marketing tropes and have an artistic value unto themselves.  Reitman didn’t do the actual editing (he gives credit there to the folks at Acme, who also do his opening credits sequences).  But still, it clearly comes from the same mind that conceived the film.  You don’t get that very often.”

Indeed, I don’t think “beautiful” is a stretch here. Of course, all this is ruined by the longer theatrical trailer, Trailer #2, that was released a month later. In this one, you get the standard BS—longer length (2:35), voice over that describes the character’s profession, plot laid out in a detailed way, more upbeat, campy tunes. Lame.

Anyway, we’ll see if the movie lives fulfills the promise made by the first preview.

~ by DBR on October 7, 2009.