"Guys, I'm feeling a little vulnerable. Sing me a song? But do it really slow and sad, k?"
With the new trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak hitting the airwaves today, I think it's safe to say that there's a new running trend with trailers coming out of Hollywood. Gone are the days of the "Inception Tone." No longer will we wait for "the drop" and the dubstep to kick in for the closing montage...
Alas, the new era of trailer edit trends is here and it is "Soft Breathy Vocalist Cover Song."
Avengers: Age of Ultron seems to have started the trend, with its deeply melancholy rendition of "I've Got No Strings" that was used to great effect raising the stakes and the emotion for our band of heroes. But now it seems to have set the precedent for trailers to follow...
Crimson Peak is using a slow-soft melancholy version of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand," San Andreas is using a slow-soft melancholy version of "California Dreaming," the Netflix series Bloodline is using a slow-soft breathy version of "Nothing Else Matters" and earlier this week the Hitman: Agent 47 trailer hit with a somewhat slowed down cover of "Voodoo Child."
Admittedly, it's nice that we've started to get away from the flash of imagery set to the deep LFE hit "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM" tones, but it's interesting to see how this has quickly become a repeated editorial device of late. Have there been other trailers recently that have used the same device that I've missed?
Can I also make a few suggestions for forthcoming trailers? How about this version of Dio's "Holy Diver" for the next Terminator trailer? Or what about a soft-breathy version of "Eye of the Tiger" for the upcoming Rocky spin-off film Creed? Or maybe this rendition of "Crazy in Love" for a Charlie's Angels reboot film?
UPDATE: Friend Adam Vadnais pointed out to me that a soft-ballad version of "Crazy in Love" was used in the 50 Shades of Grey trailer. So I guess I wasn't that far off?
