Jon Wick Trailer Analysis Essay

Movie trailers cannot be viewed as just bits and pieces of a feature-length presentation. Nor should one think of trailers as simply promotional advertisements. All movies belong and can be categorized by genre(s) – Westerns, independents, sci-fi, hybrids. We can situate a movie trailer into the same genre as the movie the trailer promotes. For example, one could study the new trailer for Jon Wick and examine the noticeable genre conventions and without seeing the film, one can tell Wick is very much a part of the “wronged man,” revenge genre. Certainly there is enough evidence in the Jon Wick trailer to place it in the tradition of movies like Man on Fire and Taken. But instead of simply viewing a trailer as an extension of the film and part
of the promotional process, I want to treat trailers as a specific genre the same way viewers think of the Western and horror as specific genres. The term genre is not used here in terms Western, sci-fi or horror conventions. The genre of the trailer separates trailers from narrative films and considers trailers as a distinct art form.
Most trailers are expensive to make and as carefully crafted as any feature-length film. The trailer is the sales pitch, the marketing tool that drives audiences into the theaters. What exactly makes movie trailers distinct from feature-length films or documentaries and what are the reoccurring elements that make trailers a genre? What techniques and strategies are the studios and filmmakers using to entice and persuade the audience? And how will the Internet and social media redefine the role of movie trailers in the film industry? This essay focuses on genre criticism to analyze trailers, because movie trailers are quintessentially persuasive cinematic texts. By offering audiences concise, direct-address cinematic texts that serve as both attractions and as a form of persuasion, trailers allow audiences to read the phenomenon of promotional narrative in a particularly dramatic way. Trailers are a unique art form that is growing in popularity with the general public. Consider the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey. After one week on YouTube, the trailer became the most watched video during that week and currently has over fifty million views. In order to narrow the scope of this essay, I will only consider recent, contemporary trailers.
Generic criticism is taken as a means toward systematic, close textual analysis. Genre criticism first gained modern attention in Karlyn Campbell and Kathleen Jamieson’s Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism: An Introduction. Campbell and Jamieson explain that genre criticism can be called an “orderly means of close textual analysis” (14). They go on to say that those who perform generic criticism are held to a certain set of constraints. Genre criticism is a valuable tool for the study of trailers. Given that little scholarly activity about movie trailers exists, genre criticism is necessary because it provides definitions and descriptions of trailers that can be used as starting places for additional research. This essay has not even considered trailers for network cable TV shows or for video games. Defining the genre of the movie trailer is important for rhetors, because it can give them an understanding of the rhetorical conventions and choices available during the editing process.
According to Sonja Foss, genre “is rooted in the assumption that certain types of situations provoke similar needs and expectations among audiences and thus call for particular kinds of rhetoric” (33). Foss points out that by identifying the trends and characteristics in a particular genre, the critic understands artifacts from different time periods and nationalities. The goal of genre criticism is to discover rhetorical trends and characteristics that occur throughout similar situations. In this case, the “situations” is the viewing of a trailer; the viewership might occur at the beginning of a movie, the end, on a tablet or smart phone or online. I am more interested identifying the key characteristics most movie trailers share and exhibit (34). Genre criticism groups artifacts and texts into three categories. In order to fashion persuasive and artistic movie trailers, the rhetor must understand the rhetorical situation, and genre criticism provides a description of what audiences expect and want.
The critic must consider the situation of the artifact, the content and style of the piece and the organizing principles and elements. The situation is what motivates the rhetor into action, into producing the text. Style and content features refer to the rhetorical choices made by the rhetor in order to persuade and move an audience. Once the genre critic identifies the situation, the content and the style in a series of artifacts, patterns emerge. The features of a genre are interconnected. Methodologically genre criticism embodies the importance of context. In their introduction to Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism, Karlyn Campbell and Kathleen Jamieson notice that an artifact in a particular genre can occur in different forms or discourse (14). The main considerations here are the organizing principles behind movie trailers.
Genre is a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Art is often a response to a social and creative state in which people write, paint, photograph and dance about what they know, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings. According to Sonja Foss, a genre is a complex amalgam, a constellation of substantive, situational and stylistic elements (10). Generic analysis reveals both the conventions and affinities that a work shares with others; it uncovers the unique elements in the rhetorical act, the particular means by which a genre is individuated in a given case. By studying the continuing patterns and elements of movie trailers, the rhetor making a trailer knows which conventions will work. Themes seem inadequate as a basis for defining movie genres since, as David Bordwell notes, “any theme may appear in any genre” (180). Bordwell asks: “Are animation and documentary films genres or modes? Is the filmed play or comedy performance a genre? If tragedy and comedy are genres, perhaps then domestic tragedy or slapstick is a formula” (180). In passing, he offers a useful inventory of categories used in film criticism, many of which have been accorded the status of genres by various commentators:
Grouping by period or country (American films of the 1930s), by director or star or producer or writer or studio (Ford, Fellini, Kurosawa or Brando), by technical process (Cinemascope films), by cycle (the 'fallen women' films), by series (the 007 movies), by style (German Expressionism), by structure (narrative), by ideology (Reaganite cinema), by venue ('drive-in movies'), by purpose (home movies), by audience ('teenpix'), by subject or theme (family film, paranoid-politics movies) (182).

While this catalogue is an informative and accurate portrait of the diverse number of genres in the cinema, it leaves off the length of a film determining and classifying it. Short films are typically considered a unique genre, and the same can be said for movie trailers.
To better understand this point, one should watch the trailers for two different films that on the surface appear to be strikingly different – Fifty Shades of Grey and Fast & Furious Seven. Both films are schedule to be released in 2015, and both films will premiere a month apart. Plot summaries of both movies should make it apparent these films appeal to different demographics, develop different sets of characters and ongoing stories and the films will build different worlds for the audience. It is almost as if both films are set on separate planets. Despite their differences, the trailers for both films share many of the same characteristics. Both trailers focus on the action and present little dialogue. Both trailers splice together shots in a dizzying and teasing manner. Both trailers mix a variety of musical styles and the soundtrack supports the action and the overall tone. With Fifty Shades of Grey, Beyoncé musically supports the romance, intrigue and sexiness of the film. For the Fast & Furious, the trailer samples South American and Arabian musical styles.
There are three notable characteristics in most professionally crafted movie trailers – familiar stories and places, conflict and tension and star and name power.
The promotional appeal of a film as a whole rests heavily on familiarity, the lure and comfort of the known. A familiar setting is a place where audiences want to go again and again, whether by reviewing favorite films with those settings or by revisiting such a place via a new film that is of the same type. The most obvious way many trailers evoke similar stories and settings is through iconography. Another pervasive trailer convention often marshalled for the rhetoric of genre is repetition. Frequent repetition within narration, titles and visual motifs connotes both sameness−the again and again aspect of a trailer. Repetition generates rhythm and rhythm is an important structural feature of a trailer’s sensory appeal. The rhetoric of a trailer also deals with assumptions trailers make about what kind of experiences audiences want to watch and what kinds of experiences they desire to gain at the movies. In trailers, the narrative is often promoted through a film’s characterizations. These appeals to interest in the characters draw audiences to films on the basis of identification with the characters. Audiences are invited to identify with the character’s situation or motivation and to want to participate or share in the film’s resolution. The first person to show up in Fifty Shades of Grey trailer is Ana Steele,
and she is the character viewers are invited to identify and empathize with, not Christian Grey. Trailers create cinematic meanings that circulate around questions dealing with identity and relationships within the films they promote. Trailers often involve the creation of suspense elements—frequently hanging the promotion on teasing hints of the film’s mysteries and questions. A trailer presents a film’s suspenseful narrative premise yet withholds key elements.
Actors and well know directors function differently in trailers than they do in most other facets of a promotional campaign. In trailers, actors can be seen in terms of typologies and stereotypes. As viewers watch a trailer the images of the actors are endowed with all of their past associations and these associations can be more significant than the apprehension of what the actor is doing in this trailer. Actors and directors can draw audiences based on their likability. Today editors of trailers tend to make films seem like an offering (“the award-winning director of Film A brings you...”) and they adhere to the time limit of two minutes and 30 seconds as stated in the marketing guidelines of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Trailer editors look for iconic, easily read images that have a strong emotional and visceral impact and create a lasting memory. Fast cuts make even the most turgid of movies appear exciting.
As Daniel Chandler points out, genre allows the audience to make sense of texts and comprehend parts of work. “Genres offer an important way of framing texts which assists comprehension. Genre knowledge orientates competent readers of the genre towards appropriate attitudes, assumptions and expectations about a text which are useful in making sense of it.” It is the readily apparent characteristics of the trailer – name dropping, conflict and tension, tradition – that make it comprehensible. Lisa Kernan sums up the techniques and strategies prevalent in movie trailers:
Most trailers have in common a few generic features: some sort of introductory or concluding address to the audience about the film either through titles or narration, selected scenes, montages of quick-cut action scenes and identifications of significant cast members and characters. Trailers present the story of the film in refracted time and space that is very different from the film being promoted. The fast pace of most trailers accentuates the spectacle and the action. The pacing displays the most attractive images, positioning the film as commodity for sale (52).
The entire point of a trailer is to sell the film, grab the audience's attention, create mystery and gaps to be filled in later and simultaneously give an impression of the conflict and the people in the film.
Trailers break the continuity of film, scrambling the space and time of the movie.
One shot in a trailer can stand in for a number of narrative elements, and those brief images become charged with significance. Trailers offer overblown fragments from the film so as to make audiences piece the film together in their minds, using their own imaginations in order to fully grasp the trailer. This filling-in of the unseen parts of the movie allows the audience to create the film they hope and want to see. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these excerpts are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the movie but usually without producing
spoilers.
An example of a trailer that exhibits these characteristics is the one for X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was met with mostly positive feedback. The ad is everything one would expect from a modern trailer: lots of fading in and out, ominous dialogue, string sections. It also uses the same music and emotional rhythms as the ad for 12 Years a Slave and the original score dates back to A Thin Red Line composed by Hans Zimmer. It is a common and popular piece of music for potentially award-winning movies. Part of this is just business: 20th Century Fox distributed all three films. The same music and styles are played again and again, and though trailer fads come and go, the result is always the same: the audience gets an ad that feels totally familiar, completely predictable and never too challenging
As both narrative and promotional texts, trailers themselves can be seen as a hybrid genre. They offer viewers an alluringly reconfigured narrative space of ellipsis and enigma, where features such as the action of a character, setting, camera movement, voice-over narration, dialogue, and music have particular signifying characteristics. There is another reason the trailer can be a separate and unique genre different from feature-length films. Aristotle defined the storytelling approach almost every feature-length movie takes. Most movies have a beginning, middle and an end. While some movies may fragment or experiment with the narrative, every narrative film eventually fulfils Aristotle’s original theory of what constitutes a story or a plot. Cause and effect, plot, is always going to be a part of filmmaking, but trailers need to be defined and studied separately, because trailers cannot have a beginning, middle, and an end. Trailers can contradict Aristotle’s notion of plot and story. Trailers merely inform audiences of the conflict evident in the film but the shots only allow the viewer to witness the trouble and the tension.
The fan-made trailer is a new burgeoning movement that includes cuts, remixes, mash-ups and voice-over versions that pinpoint the ludicrous things that happen in the trailers themselves. Putting a new spin on old trailers has taken on whole new meanings in the last few years. Powered by YouTube, easy and affordable editing software and the proliferation of teasers released online by studios, fans and satirists have been releasing heaps of brilliant interpretations on the traditional trailer format. As exciting as some Hollywood trailers can be, the studios seem to be sticking to the same patterns over and over; often not showing the creative depth of a good film, or even more often making a bad movie look exciting. That remains the main purpose of the trailer: selling the movie. Hollywood has figured out a perfect trailer template that seems to work in the marketing department, the unfortunate down side to selling to mass markets. In the future, trailers will be more engaging. Studios want interactivity.
We should continue to study and analyze the rhetorical strategies in trailers. By examining the persuasive elements of a trailer, one notices the craft and care that goes into a movie; the trailers are made by creative professionals and edited with as much attention and detail as a feature-length film. Critics and scholars focus on actors, directors and writers at the expense of the peripheral people involved in the advertising. Certainly the studios responsible for making trailers deserve to be accounted for. At the same time, the way trailers are released and made has changed dramatically over the past decade. The Internet and YouTube allow fans to interact and disrupt the studios releasing most trailers. Fans are now making their own trailers and some of them are equals to the professionally made ones. Comic-Con conventions elevate the importance of new trailers, and fans now anticipate the premiere of trailers as much, if not more, than feature-length films.