What trailers are better than their respective games/films?

Had an interesting conversation over drinks last night about trailers, and the relationship of the trailer to a film. The discussion spiraled outward tangentially from an earlier chat about the Watchmen film adaptation, wherein someone in my group commented that the film's initial trailer (seen here, for posterity's sake) was better than the film itself.

So, I pose this question to you forum-goers: What trailers ended up being better than the movies (or games) they promoted?

A secondary question, with context: Someone in our discussion last night suggested it's good for a trailer to be better than the film, because that will entice people to see movies they otherwise wouldn't have watched. What are your feelings?

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My submission to the conversation is the first one that comes to mind. Prometheus.

That first Dead Island trailer really gave the game unrealistic expectations for some people.

Dragon Age: Origins is one of my favourite games of all time.

But...

It's no Sacred Ashes.

I can't think of examples with games off the top of my head that haven't already been mentioned, like the Dead Island example, but with movies I can think of at least one, which is the trailer for Gravity. I remember watching the trailer and thinking it looked amazing. Then I watched the movie which seemed a bit repetitive and had way too much George Clooney being George Clooney for my tastes. Anyway, the trailer instilled a sense of wonder and was exciting and new. A whole movie of it actually got old, I hate to say.

@historyinrust: Yeah, Prometheus is a really solid choice for this.

Pretty much every MMO trailer in existence puts the actual game to shame. WoW, SWTOR, ESO, Eve, etc. I think the games are still good in most cases, but the trailers just put them to fucking shame.

Prometheus and Watchmen were exactly what I was gonna post. And I even liked Watchmen.

I had the same reaction last night. I don't think it's necessarily a slight to Watchmen to heap praise on its trailer. That stinking trailer had so much atmosphere and character. It's truthfully the most memorable thing--to me, at least--related to the whole film.

All of blizzards non rts games are overshadowed by their cutscenes.

When I first saw the trailer for Shutter Island I was expecting a horror, still enjoyed the movie but I was a little disappointed.

@historyinrust said:

I don't think the trailers were THAT great for Watchmen, but the opening credits of Watchmen are AMAZING compared to the rest of the film. The song choice works in a clever way, because it literally shows you how certain events of 20th century history were altered by the existence of the story's heroes. I liked the little touches that weren't even canonical, like in this timeline the Enola Gay was instead named Miss Jupiter (after Silk Spectre) and The Comedian is the one who shot JFK.

On the other hand, I don't know if it was as effective if you hadn't already read the comics. In the credits you just see Dollar Bill randomly shot in the head in some doorway with his cape stuck in the door. In the comics, you learn that he retired but still served as security/mascot for a chain of banks, which ultimately should be a much safer job, but was shot during by a bank robber when his cape got stuck in the revolving door. Seeing the Minutemen in their glory days was cool, but the film barely mentions how Hooded Justice and Silhouette were secretly gay, and how Hooded Justice probably got killed years later by The Comedian due to a grudge.

@historyinrust: Perfect example.

One that comes to mind is Inception. I love the movie, love it love it love it. But that trailer was absolutely fucking amazing and....yeah I'll say it is better than the overall film, but barely.

OK, I know both of these trailers are super cliche emo "Can I contain the darkness within myself?" fare, but I still got pretty hyped for them. Both are solid games, but I'm not sure either lived up to the super nebulous hype I got from the trailers.

In particular, that Lords of Shadow 1 trailer is just the barest hint of a motivation ("Gabriel might be able to revive his dead wife"), but so many of the specifics are left up to your imagination that you envision it as this really powerful moment in the story (also because the trailer music is super epic). I feel the same way about Phantom Pain; there's a lot of potential in just seeing those shots of Snake and Miller with their shit all messed up and missing limbs, and how the loss of Mother Base and MSF looks like it will turn Big Boss into the villain he later became.

Was also gonna say Prometheus, so... done.

@historyinrust: As to the question of a trailer being better than a film to entice people, it made me think of all the foreign language movie trailers made for the US that conspicuously have zero dialog in them. Or worse, some kind of English narration that never appears in the movie at all. Tons of people hate movies "with the words at the bottom", so that's clearly an instance of a studio trying to get folks to buy a ticket they otherwise wouldn't have. It's not really a sign of the trailer being better than a movie, but obviously an intentional omission of shots.

@jadegl: Huh. Interesting take. I do hear a lot of folks knocking Gravity for its amount of Clooneyism.

I'm with you to some extent, and catch myself wondering if the film couldn't have been made with zero dialogue or expositional backstory whatsoever.

I really liked Tree of Life, and figured this would be more of the same. After all, the trailer is amazing.

Movie trailers are better than the movie 9/10 times. There's just such a high volume of shit movies and something that is unbearable over 90 - 180 minutes can easily be made hilarious/mysterious/sexy/enticing in a 1-2 minute video.

For games it's completely opposite, because if you are impressed by a CG trailer of a game you are either A) a grandpa or B) have never played a game before.

I mean really. If you watched those Star Wars MMO trailers and were all OH MAN THE GAME WILL RULE then I just have nothing to say to you other than, uh, what?

As far as games that had legit gameplay trailers that were better than the games? Hmmmmm.

I dunno. Personally, I just don't get excited for trailers that are for franchises I have never played. Or what I should say is I don't get my hopes up.

The relationship between movies and trailers is much closer than trailers and games because, duh, gameplay.

Spiderman 3. God I've never been so dissapointed in a film ever.

Having just watched that trailer again I now realise there is motherfucking Godzilla roar at 1:30. NOW ITS TWICE AS DISAPPOINTING.

@historyinrust: It's actually just the fact that I didn't really get astronaut from him, I just felt like I was watching George Clooney recite dialogue. Weird complaint, I know. But where in some movies it works (Out of Sight, Oceans movies, etc) it didn't work with me here. It's not that I actively disliked the movie, I just thought the trailer astounded me, while the movie kind of got old by the end. It was gorgeous to watch though, just not much of a story really.

What immediately comes to mind for me was when I first saw the trailer for the movie "Smokin Aces." I thought it was going to be an insane balls out action movie, and it was very much not.

This is a bit off topic but I find that the reverse is true in asian media. In everything from movies to tv the trailers are almost always worse than the actual show/ movie. This is especially true with anime, anything that isn't just a remix of or is the future op is usually dreadfully bad.

In recent memory? Dead Man Down.

That movie looked amazing based on the trailer, and uh. yea.....

I see it's already been said, but as somebody who greatly dislikes the Watchmen movie, the trailer with Muse's Take a Bow STILL gives me chills.

man..... this reminds me how much I hate movies more.

Pixar's the Brave really did pull one over me, bought 3 tickets in 3d and the projector had a dim bulb which made it impossible since the mother character was a black bear through out half the film. I felt like I robbed after seeing that film, movie ticket prices are fucking bullshit.

@flstyle: Wow, NONE of the characters look like their game counterparts at all. It would have taken me a bit to realize that was for Dragon Age if I hadn't known beforehand.

That being said, I never let cinematic trailers for games change my expectations for me, never since early Blizzard games - I remember watching the WC3 cinematic trailer a LOT, and then I was kind of bummed out after playing the game (though the game WAS good).

Edit: Wow, if I had seen that trailer for Brave prior to the movie, I would have been pissed! That makes it look so much better than what we inevitably got. Brave wasn't necessarily bad, it was just... meh.

@babychoochoo: Agreed. Companies that make MMOs hire some of the best cinematic trailer makers for games that barely represent the game itself.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is also a pretty great example.

• Morrigan and Leliana's voices are dead give-aways
• They're on the quest to find Andraste's ashes, playable in DA:O
• The darkspawn are pretty obvious

BioWare hired Blur Studio to create the trailer, there isn't any in-game footage or assets used. Many people prefer to play with the Sacred Ashes designs through mods and such.

I think I found all of GTA V trailers to be more entertaining than the full game itself. That both speaks to how amazing some of those trailers are, and to how disappointed I was with GTA V overall.

The Cowboy Bebop movie had a spectacular trailer and the movie itself was horrible.

Surprised no one has mentioned this one:

Statcraft II: Wings of Liberty. Showed all the best bits of CG, while the actual game changed the direction into a bad love story.

Most trailers ever?

So doesn't seem to be much point to rattling off one or two. :/

YES! Wow, I can't believe I didn't think of this! That has to be one of the BEST trailers I have ever seen, and I came away almost feeling betrayed after playing the actual game. Calling it a 'bad' love story is being FAR too nice, since I consider it possibly the worst AAA video game story I've ever had the displeasure of playing through.

Be fair here. It doesn't take much for any trailer to be better than Prometheus.

The Old Republic trailers come to mind.

I don't hate this game, im actually in the middle of the directors cut version, its just that i really liked all the trailers they put out for this game.

I think in the past, when games looked really bad compared to their CG trailers, it happened quite often. At the same time people were really excited to watch CGs even if they knew the game would look nothing like it in game. Companies would invest heavily in CGs back then. Seems really funny looking back now.

Street Fighter x Tekken, then again, they set the bar ridiculously high.

Hellgate London. I was so hype for this game back when the trailer aired. Trailer still kicks copious amounts of ass.

I'm surprised nobody has posted the Crysis Jungle Fight trailer yet, they should face criminal charges for how misleading that thing was.