*BEWARE, POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR "Iron Man 3" AND JOHN WICK*
For my project, I chose to analyze the effectiveness of the "Iron Man 3" movie trailer. While I'm focusing primarily on the one trailer, this post will still include a brief look at other trailers, teasers, and consumer reaction. I mentioned the last of those because with big companies like Marvel, customers will often advertise for the films on their own. I will explore this claim later on. The main reason I chose this movie is that I worked at Carmike Cinemas when it was released, so I have a bit more knowledge about the premiere and the lead-up to it than the average person.
Description
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CzoSeClcw0
This is the main trailer and the one that I chose to describe. It began with the traditional Movie Picture Association ratings, but instead of showing the Marvel Studios logo next, it transitioned immediately to the night sky and a short clip of snow falling, the camera set so the angle was pointing straight up through a few trees. I believe that was so movie patrons didn't immediately know what the trailer was for and would become very excited when; in the next moment, Iron Man; clad in a new suit and with his ARC reactor flickering, fell into the snow.
This is followed by Robert Downey Jr's voice (as Tony Stark) filtering through the speakers, saying: "I've got a lot of apologies to make." This gives the audience the correct impression that the third installment of the Iron Man series would be darker in nature than the first two. The Marvel Studios logo and graphic (as well as the Paramount graphic) came on screen after this statement and the music (Joseph Trapanese's "Something to Fight For) became louder.
The next clip showed Tony Stark leaving what looked to be the lobby of a hotel and walking into a mob of reporters. Their cameras flashed as he pushed his way through them in slow motion and stated in a voice-over: "Nothing's been the same since New York." This is; of course, a reference to "The Avengers", which came out that summer. Next was a clip of Stark in his Malibu home, holding his hand out toward a work bench. In an instant, one of his gauntlets flew to him and attached itself to his hand on its own. This showed that Stark has improved upon his suit. Another voice-over then said: "You experience things... and then they're over," giving the audience the impression that while the Chitauri invasion of the previous movie had ended in victory for the human race, perhaps Iron Man hadn't gotten over it quite yet. Next came a short clip of Stark climbing into his bed with the lamp on beside him, he said: "I can't sleep."
The audience was given a brief glance at Don Cheedle (Colonel James Rhodes), before it moved to a clip of a man and a boy walking into an alley in the snow, the boy's hand briefly skimming the wall as Stark continues his earlier statement with: "And when I do [sleep], I have nightmares." This is followed by brief clips of helicopters flying and the new movie villian, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), and Stark wearing his suit and standing in a fighting stance in his basement. This is overlaid by Stark’s voice saying: “Honestly, there’s a hundred people who wanna kill me.” The first glimpse of Pepper Potts is finally given, standing in the Malibu mansion and looking past the camera at what is then shown to be Stark, wearing some kind of device on his head and saying, “I hope I can protect the one thing I can’t live without,” gesturing at Potts. The fear levels were ramped up immediately after this when a clip showed Stark’s bedroom and Potts trying to wake him when an Iron Man suit grabbed her arm, turned her over, and pinned her to the bed. Text then popped up on the screen that read: “THIS SUMMER”.
Above is a screenshot of the next clip, a view of the Iron Man suits exploding in their cases, accompanied by loud, dramatic music. The viewers were then bombarded by several clips in quick succession. An unknown man removing his hood; an unknown, battered woman lying on the ground and wearing a fearful expression; War Machine (Colonel Rhodes’s Iron Man suit) landing on a red carpet and walking among soldiers; Stark’s bodyguard, Happy, lying bleeding amongst the rubble of a building; Potts receiving a kiss on the cheek from Killian; Stark on a medical table as an oxygen mask was placed over his face; an airplane with the side ripped open and people flying out only to be caught by Iron Man; Potts trapped in some sort of metal restraints and crying in anguish; unknown hands holding a cracked Iron Man faceplate; a pair of hands wearing many rings coming together; Stark in his mansion with chunks of the ceiling falling all around him and one of his suits leaning menacingly over him; a woman pushing Stark up against a wall; War Machine slamming a suit-wearing man through a desk; Iron Man’s eye-holes lighting up through a cloud of dust; an unknown man with a top-knot pulling back the slide of a handgun; helicopters flying toward Stark’s mansion and arming their missiles; Stark and Potts turning to face the windows with shocked expressions; Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, and the helicopters firing their missiles. All through this sequence of clips, Ben Kingsley’s voice announced, “Ladies, children, sheep, some people call me a terrorist. I consider myself a teacher. Lesson number one. Heroes: there is no such thing.”
The missiles then hit the supports on the mansion and Stark and Potts went flying backwards in slow motion. The mansion began to collapse and fall off the cliff it was built on. Cameras then focused on Iron Man sliding across a tilting floor and falling into the ocean along with the rubble of his home. Tangled in wires and cables, he was dragged to the bottom, where a massive chunk of the house quickly bore down upon him. Just before it struck, the screen switched over to the movie title, reading “Iron Man 3”, and laid over what appeared to be a broken ARC reactor. This was followed by a final clip of a t-shirt wearing Tony Stark using a rope to drag a non-functioning Iron Man suit behind him through the snow. Finally, a release date was shown: “May 3 2013”.
All of these actors (with the obvious exceptions of Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley) are familiar to anyone who has seen the previous Iron Man movies. The new actors are introduced as villains. This trailer was released on October 23, 2012 and was just over two minutes long. It was preceded by teaser trailers and followed by alternative trailers.
Analysis
As the many scenes of buildings falling apart, Iron Man suits breaking or exploding, and somber music would suggest, this movie was darker than its prequels right from the off. The dialogue from Stark suggested both guilt and anxiety over the events of “The Avengers”. He expressed his inability to sleep and the nightmares that accompany what sleep he manages to get. It introduced characters that viewers would know and a couple of unfamiliar characters that viewers would wonder about. The exploding suits and the dialogue from The Mandarin created a very tense atmosphere that culminated in Iron Man at the bottom of the ocean, about to be crushed by a concrete chunk of his own mansion.
Because movie trailers don’t use as many traditional persuasive techniques as ads do, I looked online to see if I could find any articles about persuasion that could get me started. I found this quote from filmeducation.org that I believe sums up the purpose of movie trailers rather well: “The short duration and strong visual and auditory content means that trailers engage pupils of all ages, abilities and learning styles.” Though this article was obviously more concerned with explaining the purpose that movie trailers serve for younger children, it made a very good point. We’ve discussed in class how short the average adult attention span is nowadays, and I suspect that trailers now cater as much to adults in their formatting as they do to children. The trailer’s purpose is to introduce a new movie, get viewers excited about it, and give them an idea of what they can expect from the film without giving away the entire plot or any twists that may occur. The "Iron Man 3" trailer seems to do an excellent job of that.
Movie trailers are specifically selected to make use of their mediums. I’ll give an example that I’m not sure most people know about. Every other week or so, the theater I work at receives a delivery of hard-drives from the Box Office. These hard-drives are filled with new movie trailers specifically selected to air during the previews of certain films that we’re already showing. These trailers are selected to cater to the presumed interest of the customers. For example: Carmike Cinemas is currently showing a movie called “Gone Girl”; this movie is a drama concerning a man who insists that he didn’t kill his wife (although no one believes him). Before every showing of this movie, an ad for “John Wick” played. “John Wick” is a movie starring Keanu Reeves that follows the efforts of a former hit-man to take revenge against the gang that broke into his home and killed his dog (a last gift from his now-dead wife).
My point is basically that movie trailers airing in theaters are selected to match the genres of the movies that people are watching. Drama movies will have dramatic trailers, comedy movies will have comedic trailers, etc. In this way, the Box Office can ensure that their film trailers are reaching exactly the audiences they want them to, and the advertising medium is used very well.
Interpretation and Evaluation
Obviously the subject of Iron Man is one that many people will be familiar with. The third installment is still very different from the previous two for a very big reason, though. The first two movies were directed by Jon Favreau (who also plays Happy in the films); while the third was directed by Shane Black (Predator, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).
Another set of differences doesn’t pertain directly to the ad, but was a point of much controversy due to the misleading nature of the ad campaign and much of the film. The Mandarin was sold as the primary villain in trailers and the facade is kept up through the first half of the film. When it was revealed to viewers that The Mandarin was merely a puppet used to take the blame for terrorist attacks that were being committed by Aldrich Killian, many viewers became very upset and attacked the trailers right alongside the writers for having misled them and dishonored the background of a very important character in the comics.
One of the first incarnations of Marvel’s Mandarin
The Mandarin as portrayed by Ben Kingsley in “Iron Man 3”
Many people were outraged by the movie’s portrayal of The Mandarin as a hapless actor hired to take credit for terrorist attacks that were actually being committed by the head of Extremis, Aldrich Killian. Though I had heard complaints about this as patrons left the theaters on opening weekend, I didn’t really understand what they were talking about until I watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3r4FklA4gI, this is an Honest Trailer. They’re produced by the Youtube channel “ScreenJunkies” and are frankly hilarious. The video claims that The Mandarin is Stark’s arch-enemy and that “turning him into a punchline” is “not just ignoring the comics. This dropping their pants and wiping their butt with them!” While much of this outrage was likely for comedic effect, I discovered after a little research that many viewers felt the same way. A CinemaBlend article found here: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Iron-Man-3-Ruined-Mandarin-Real-Fans-Should-Pissed-37402.html gives a scathing review of Shane Black’s interpretation of The Mandarin in the film.
IMDB user “davidofthecourt: This is a poor excuse of a plot that outright spits in the face of fans and destroys one of Marvel's most powerful villains. Seriously, the Mandarin is Tony Stark's antithesis; their conflict was always the symbol for magic vs. science.
iDigitalTimes (http://www.idigitaltimes.com/iron-man-3-review-5-reasons--mandarin-was-disappointing-villain-spoilers-357737): “It's the vague and unconvincing villain, Dr. Aldrich Killian, who has no real motivation and even less personality. Yes, in a humorous but ultimately disappointing twist, it is revealed the Mandarin is nothing but smoke and mirrors, an actor posing as a terrorist leader while Dr. Killian is the real mastermind.”
I developed the theory that if the trailers had given a hint that The Mandarin wasn’t the real villain, perhaps some of this outrage could have been tempered. People tend to react less to things that they’re expecting than things that are totally out of the blue. While the point of The Mandarin was to mislead and misdirect to create a plot-twist, it still drew a lot of backlash from a public that were expecting much more respect for a villain that many of them had grown up reading about. This was a definite weakness for the ad, though the rest of it was very strong and produced exactly the reaction that the studio was hoping for. This is evidenced by the fact that Iron Man 3 became the highest grossing Iron Man movie, earning $174,144,585 on opening weekend.
The target audience for this trailer/movie was made up of comic book fans, Marvel cinematic universe fans, and action fans in general. The ad created suspense and uncertainty among viewers with clips of exploding Iron Man suits, Stark going into surgery, and the broken faceplate. The end of the movie featured a Tony Stark who no longer had the ARC reactor in his chest. This generated so much fear that Marvel Studios added a little text message at the very end of the movie. After the credits, after-credit scene, and final logos came the message “Tony Stark will return.”
Engagement
One thing that I discovered as I was researching the trailer was that the clip of The Mandarin’s folded, be-ringed hands was a nod to the comics. The Mandarin comic character wore what were known as “The Ten Rings of Power”. The rings can only be used by The Mandarin and each ring performs a different function: ice blast, mento-intensifier, electro-blast, flame-blast, white light, black light, disintegration beam, vortex beam, impact beam, and rearranger. (http://marvel.com/universe/Mandarin's_Rings)
The next thing I found was that Shane Black’s trademark as a director is setting his movies during Christmas, which is why Iron Man 3 was set during the winter season despite being released just before the beginning of the summer. (http://screenrant.com/iron-man-3-spoilers-comic-book-references-easter-eggs-trivia/)
One thing that I discovered for myself was that customers would come to the theater wearing Iron Man and various Avengers costumes in order to psych themselves up for the movie. It was a very amusing and colorful display, with some even ordering popcorn or asking for directions in character. Though I didn’t see this happen personally, I certainly wish that I had:
The trailer was certainly effective on me, and the Box Office stats say that it was for others as well. I worked the night that Iron Man 3 premiered. The next day my grandma and I went to see the very first showing. Personally, I thought the movie really had some good moments. Overall it couldn’t compare to either The Avengers or the first Iron Man, but it was a solid film and I did enjoy it.
Conclusion
Though my working background gave me a lot of knowledge of how trailers are produced and how they’re used, this assignment taught me that there’s always more to learn. Describing and analyzing the trailer made me really take a good long look at how it was arranged, why it was arranged that way, and how those aspects made it easier to draw the interest of and manipulate viewers. This is important for me because I see them so often and am so frequently exposed to the persuasive techniques they offer.
The biggest surprise for me was probably the reactions of people who know nothing about the comics and the reactions of those who read the comics religiously. Mainly what surprised me was how different those reactions were. People who hadn’t read them thought The Mandarin was nothing more than a comedic plot device used to create a twist that the viewers wouldn’t see coming. The people who read the comics knew the history of this character, though, and were offended by how it was used within the film and that they weren’t given the slightest bit of warning through the trailer.
Other Reviews of the Trailer:
Pictures:
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