Requiem for the Trailer Voice

I don't know if you've noticed it. I haven't heard anybody talk about it. Yet something very wonderful has happened at the movies. It started in the mid 90s by my best estimation. Now, in 2007, the deep overbearing "trailer voice" is all but dead. He rests somewhere between Crystal Clear Pepsi and Urkle. No longer will you go to the movies to hear the rumbling proclamation: "IN A WORLD...TORN BY INCOMPETENCE...THERE IS ONLY ONE MAN TO GET...THINGS...DONE" Or something like that. Now trailers use the art of montage (what a concept), coupled with manipulative music, actual scenes from the movie, and, this is my favorite part, THE WRITTEN WORD to convey the story. After decades of the exact same trailer format, the "trailer voice" has become iconic. A cliché. Everyone has that annoying ass friend who insists on narrating your mundane activities in the "trailer voice."

HE IS A PLAGUE ON SOCIETY AND MUST BE DEALT WITH!

Sorry. I lost my head. Thankfully, the trailer gods have taken up the cause and done away with the voice. Instead, trailers have become akin to short films, drawing the audience in the same way a dramatic montage would in the film itself. There's actually creativity involved in their structure, utilizing dialog from the movie instead of some third party narrator, lacing in jokes or making up jokes through editing that sometimes aren't even in the movie, and pumping up the score. I think I could argue that there is not a more visceral, nor a more manipulative art form than music. Through a conjunction of a few chords, a variance in rhythm and orchestration, music can do in 30 seconds what a movie takes 2 hours to accomplish, a novel 500 pages. It can suck you in, get your adrenaline pumping, make you feel happy, sad, frightened, in love, or annoyed. Matched with the proper visual imagery, you can make the shittiest movie look enticing. And that's really what a trailer is for: to convince people to watch your movie on the merits of the 60 second trailer rather than the quality of the film itself. If anything, opening weekend numbers should be attributed to the power of the trailer and marketing campaign, not the quality of the movie. The movie itself is tertiary.

And with the prevalent use of text - god knows, it's probably just a fad - Hollywood is belying a very positive assumption about the American populace - we're literate! Now if this isn't a cause for celebration, I don't know what is. The current estimation of American society is that we don't need someone to tell us what to think, they can write it down for us and we can read it! Well, I am just tickled pink by this.

Below is a requiem for the trailer voice. If only we could burn it in effigy.

One of the most annoying trailers I can remember:
A River Runs Through It

Loving LOVING the trailer voice in this classic:
Home Alone

Here, we notice the trailer voice on its death bed. Used in introduction, it disappears completely, never to return:
Independence Day

And one of my favorite trailers today, from yet to be released
Superbad.

It's funny, after every trailer and before every feature, you get an annoying PSA that says, "Please. No talking during the movie." Well, it seems the trailer gods have taken that advice to heart. Finally.