It’s a feeling familiar to many moviegoers: You’re stalled in traffic; there are train delays on the subway; you thought you had arrived at the theatre right on time, only to find yourself stuck at the end of a line snaking its way out and away from the building’s entrance. You’re going to be late for your movie, there’s no doubt about it, but happily, your anxiety is checked by the recollection of common cinema practice. Movies never start on time. They always begin 10 minutes later than listed, at least. And why? Because it’s standard form for a host of pre-show previews to play before each feature. And so you breathe easy, knowing there’s a nice, long buffer of movie trailers between you and the opening scene of your film.
It remains to be seen whether or not the new set of voluntary guidelines released by the National Association of Theatre Owners today will dramatically affect this common 10-minute lag-time, between when a film is listed to begin and when it does begin, but one thing is likely: The trailers themselves will be shorter. NATO has asked that all movie trailers run no longer than two minutes, a full 30 seconds shorter than today’s norm. They’re also asking distributors not to release a trailer more than five months ahead of a film’s premiere. These new guidelines, however, do allow for two exemptions per year, per distributor. They’re scheduled to go into effect next fall.
Does this mean theatre audiences will be treated to many more short trailers before their film begins, or will a movie scheduled for 8PM now in fact start closer to 8:05 instead of 8:10PM? Most importantly for trailer fans, what effect will the time restriction (should distributors choose to adhere to it) have on the caliber of preview itself?
Perhaps it will result in the creation of trailers that skew towards the kind of quality work that makes up today’s list, inspired by NATO’s announcement, of the best movie trailers of all time. It’s true, most of the below previews do not run much longer than two minutes. Other similarities include an ingenious use of music (Jefferson Airplane providing the aural relief at the end of the anxious A Serious Man trailer; the fervid interest The Social Network’s trailer stoked in a capella, and preferably foreign, covers of Radiohead; Arcade Fire reaching the masses via the Where the Wild Things Are preview; and of course, everything auditory about the Pulp Fiction trailer) and, in most instances, a tendency to tease and hint at rather than explain an entire premise. (Remember the Cloverfield phenomenon?)
Admittedly, our list trends towards more recent films, with a certain emphasis on horror and indies, so if you have any suggestions for older works or genres not included, feel free to sound off in the comments below!
The Social Network
Where the Wild Things Are
Pulp Fiction
The Exorcist
Citizen Kane
A Serious Man
Cloverfield
The Shining
The Blair Witch Project
Little Children
Alien
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