Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Best Pixar Trailers: Cars 2

By the time a major motion picture finally hits the bit screen, there are trailers upon trailers available to lure potential viewers. In this series, I will be choosing what I think is the best trailer for each Pixar film and sharing why it gets me more excited than any of its trailer siblings.

I'm going to be working backwards (the newer a film, the easier to find the trailers), starting with Pixar's most recent Cars 2. Enjoy, and feel free to comment with that advertising got you to the theaters a little bit faster.




Okay, not counting the version of Trailer 1 done entirely in LEGOs, because that's just in a class of its own.


Trailer 4



Cars 2 had quite a few trailers that just didn't fully grab me. It's a hard film to find a balance for and a hard film to advertise without falling back on "there's explosions, spy gadgets, and cool looking new cars!" which, while it may get kids and car enthusiasts wanting to go, doesn't mean much to me alone. The final trailer, Trailer 4, for the film starts with the most basic icon of the franchise: Lightning on a race track. It slowly pans into that and lets you feel the energy. It has a reminiscence to the first film without learning on it like the first trailer did. Of course, it makes sure to also shows explosions and spy gear which, once you know that characters matter, are awesome.

This trailer also made a point of an emotional arc in the film, which was sorely needed. While Cars 2 isn't as emotional as most of Pixar's fare, it does have a heart and fans of the studio care about that.

I think what cements this for me though is the sound. The opening has a very epic feel with the booming noise, and then there are some great songs choices. (If anybody knows where the "duh dah duhduhduh" spy riff thing is from, please tell me. I want an MP3 of that.) "You Might Think" also makes its debut here, if I'm not mistaken, and it just adds a loose, fun feel towards the end of the trailer.

This was the most well rounded trailer of the bunch in my opinion, and I'm glad it was the first of the trailers that played before KFP2 when I went to see it, because I needed the time those other trailers took to calm down.

1 comment:

  1. This was my favorite trailer as well, because not only did it delve into the emotional McQueen/Mater buddy drama and Mater's self-realization, it also seemed to me that this was the first trailer that strived to make the film especially appealing to adults rather than just kids. I'm not sure if that's due to the Weezer cover song, Mater's painful reflection on who he is or just the overall sophistication of this trailer.

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