The best movie trailers of 2021
Our list of the year's best movie advertising campaigns includes Licorice Pizza, Last Night In Soho, and Titane
Film Lists Paul Thomas Anderson
Like an old projector dragged out of storage, movie theaters flickered uneasily back to life in 2021. It can’t be overstated, how rejuvenating it was to see films in an auditorium again, even if that excitement was laced with some lingering anxiety. Oh how we missed the theatrical experience! The Dolby rumble. The smell of fresh popcorn. The thrill of a shared laugh or shudder with strangers on the same wavelength. And, yes, the old, familiar dopamine hit provoked by that grand promise of something new further on the horizon, a prophecy in green and white: “The following preview has been approved for appropriate audiences by the Motion Pictures Association Of America.”
Trailers didn’t disappear last year. But it wasn’t quite the same, watching them on our little screens in our little homes, as they popped into our Twitter feeds or grabbed some real estate on our websites of choice. Like the movies they’re designed to tell us about, trailers play best on the biggest screen possible. The 10 that follow were expert sizzle reels and supercuts that transcended their mercenary function: However effective they proved to be in getting audiences back to those recently reopened venues, these fleeting “coming attractions”—as they were called in an older moviegoing world—could be admired as standalone works of art. Even if you missed them at their largest, they still looked large, like the extravagant shadows cast by the movies they teased.
16 Comments
Are you people afraid Scorsese will come beat you up if you admit that movies people actually saw had good trailers too?Like, get right out of here with a list that doesn’t include Dune, Matrix Resurrections, and that “movies are back, here’s our slate” extended Marvel thing.
I would say the Matrix trailer, that first one especially, was fantastic and I’m surprised it’s not on this list. Dune and Marvel trailers this year were a little subpar. Also Belfast should be on here.
That first Matrix trailer introduced me to Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit which was great.
You mean you didn’t see any of (checks IMDB) the 78+ other movies/TV shows that song has shown up in over the past 50 years?
I’m assuming this is a joke, but I’m not sure.
Honestly I either did not or I didn’t remember them, this is my earliest memory of encountering this song but I certainly don’t discount prior exposure to it but then completely forgetting about it.
It’s Hollywood’s go-to song for indicating that it’s the 60s or that people are on drugs.
I…wait…what? Is this a situation where I find out you’re in like your early 20s and turn to dust.
*bones crumble into dust, gets swept away by a slight breeze*
Any specific Marvel trailer, yeah, although maybe No Way Home gets an honorable mention for its first one. But I was referring to this:
The first Resurrections trailer is incredible. Made me go from being merely curious about what a 2021 Matrix film would even be to… well, still not having any real idea (in a good way) but being fully down for whatever that trailer was selling.
MISTER ANDERSONHad chills at that.Can’t stop watch over and over just for that alone either.
Soho did have a nice trailer. Shame the movie ended up being trash.
So we’re just gonna act like the DC Fandome trailer for The Batman doesn’t exist? Ooook
Happy to see Titane high on the list.I was expecting Mad God to appear somewhere, but it does come across more like a demo reel than an actual trailer, so… I get it.
I liked West Side Story and Last Night in Soho’s trailers a lot.
No Time To Die’s final trailer actually got my ass back in a theater. Regardless of final product, the Craig Bonds have always trailered really well.
And you had to have left this one for the readers on purpose because I know you know it continues to market itself with a near orgasmic 2.5 minutes