Great Trailer: Battle LA


If Music Be The Food Of Love…

There are some trailers that simple tell the entire story in all of 2 or so minutes, some that just rely on the deep, ‘Barry White on gravel’ tones of Mr Trailer, and then there are some that are just beautiful. Usually this is because they understand the trailer medium perfectly, if often failing to actually fulfil their remit of putting bums on seats.

In particular it’s the inventive use of music in trailers that elevates a potentially ordinary set of movieclips into something truly special, often by replacing the simple ‘trailer as exposition’ with a sense of mood. As an example, the Watchmen trailer‘s use of Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning‘ transformed a ton of special effects into a eulogy to an alternate 1970’s where superheroes actually existed.

Battle LA, which looks to be a vaguely interesting melange of  Cloverfield, Independence Day and War Of The Worlds, has the most evocative trailer I’ve seen for ages, combining a sensible amount of plot come on with a beautiful musical counterpoint to the Michael Bay-like scenes of destruction. The track, by the way is Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘The Sun’s Gone Dim And The Sky’s Turned Black‘, and is well worth purchasing.

 

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