THE FORCE AWAKENS & The Art Of The Billion Dollar Trailer

In the wide-ranging scope of cinema as an art form, there’s an often overlooked subcategory that not many people seem to recognize much for its merits, or even for having any at all.

And that’s the art of the movie trailer.

There are many different types, ranging from the enigmatic, out-of-context montage of tone-setting shots more commonly attributed to teaser trailers for such films as 2011’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or Dunkirk, to the more abrasive efforts of studios just looking to make a quick buck like Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC, or the godforsaken disaster called Hurricane Heist.

But the special kind of trailer that I want to talk about today falls squarely in the arena of “What Made Me So Damn Excited To See This Just From One Trailer”.

These are the biggest of the big. And even bigger than that. Think Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Star Wars, or just anything ran by Disney. These are the hype-building, fan-pandering, holy-shit trailers that are the bread and butter of every major studio’s latest franchise-carrying blockbuster release.

And we’re going to dissect every inch of them to see how they work.

The 4-Act Structure of the Billion Dollar Trailer

Much like the movies they represent, the “billion dollar” trailer earns its name off of a very specific structure that has to be followed in order to ensure their audience’s knowledge of the movie’s basic story outline and characters, while teasing what’s to be in store for them if they go out and see it.

Such a formula can be broken down pretty much like this: The Cold Open, The Intro, The Stakes, & The Climax.

Let’s look at what each of these mean, with a prime example of this structure in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You can’t get much bigger of a studio than Disney/Lucasfilm, nor can you get a trailer more by-the-books and formulaic (in a good way, of course) than the one for the premiere chapter in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

The Cold Open

This is a mysterious, intriguing, or action-packed shot to open the trailer in the same vein of the oft-repeated advice from your 8th grade English teacher: “Make sure to use an attention-grabber to start your essay!”

In the case of The Force Awakens, it’s simply everything before the Lucasfilm logo fades in. Instead of starting with Han, Luke, Leia, or anyone or anything in Star Wars we already know and love, our attention is captured instead by the introduction of a mysterious, unnamed new character.

We even get a bit of dialogue that perfectly encapsulates this idea of grabbing audience interest with an unknown voice-over asking “Who are you?”, with this new character answering in voice-over by saying “No one”.

This alone gets our human desire for answers to intrigue working overtime within the first few seconds, forcing us to think this character most certainly isn’t no one, but someone we probably will get to know pretty soon.

The Intro 

The lone piano note. The single violin. You know how it goes. After the tease of the Cold Open gets us caught, this is where we get slowly, gradually reeled in.

In our popular science fiction example here, we’re introduced to the rest of our new characters – hero and villain alike – through a series of various, efficiently-told soundbites of their mission in life, leading the audience to suspect that some of them might lead to some delicious conflict in the near future.

The Stakes

This is the main meat of our trailer, giving us a glimpse into the conflict and showing us tasteful peeks into the efforts of our characters in beating the Big Bad, cutting just before the ends of key scenes and thereby baiting us into wanting more.

In the case of The Force Awakens, this happens right around the words “This Christmas” command the screen. The music almost instantly turns dark, showing us the amazingly dramatic (albeit cut) shot of Kylo Ren and his groupies standing menacingly in the rain. The threat is clear and a montage of set piece after set piece of explosive action plays out in all its epic fashion.

All this and the music builds and builds until…

The Climax

I’d say this is pretty self-explanatory for the most part, but that would defeat the purpose of writing, so I’ll go ahead and try.

Here we have the final few seconds of this trailer, John Williams’s score is in full-force – rising, rising, and still rising – drums setting the rapid beat until it all resolves in a unique kind of way in this case with a satisfyingly blissful anti-climax of music that feeds your nostalgia back to you like a regurgitating mother bird.

It’s big, it’s epic, and God knows it’s Star Wars.

Conclusion

Now that you know the science behind these kinds of “billion dollar” trailers, I challenge you to look back on all the biggest franchise “event” movies, and analyze each of their trailers as to finally scratch that annoyingly bugging “What Made Me So Excited To See This Just From One Trailer” itch.

You may be surprised to find out just how much these blockbuster epics have in common in terms of structuring their trailers to an exact mold. And, more importantly, how they’re able to, with mathematic precision, manipulate their pre-existing fanbase and new fans alike into spending a Thursday midnight trip to the movie theater because they couldn’t wait one more day.

Who says good art can’t also lead to billions and billions of dollars?

What about you? Were there any trailers that made you want to see a movie right then and there? Should trailer-making be considered its own art form? Let us know in the comments!