Compare two film trailers, 'Lord of the Rings III' and 'The Gladiator'.

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Sidra Hafeez

English (Media Coursework)

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A film trailer is a sequence or progression of captivating, mind-clutching scenes from a film. Trailers usually encapsulate the film and end with a cliff-hanger; capturing the viewer’s attention and attracting them towards the film, encouraging them to watch it.

My task is to compare two film trailers, ‘Lord of the Rings III’ and ‘The Gladiator’.

‘The Lord of the Rings III’ is an imaginary, wizardry, legendary, sort of film. It consisted of things such as dragons, gremlins, old men with long white beards and also castles and warriors. The trailer contained many missionary scenes of bravery like determined young men fighting with bows and arrows and also a horse running in an open filed with a man on it, holding a white stick with a luminous, vivid light on top it. The trailer also had calm gentle scenes for example, when the small gremlin spoke, whilst the man was climbing up a high rocky cliff and said ‘come master’, the gremlin sounded so innocent; but do we know whether or not the gremlin is good or bad? A scene like this get the viewer tense and makes them anxious to watch the film.

The first clip shown is of some open land with some rocky hills and a sort of tall tower in the corner with a bell at the top of it. There is also a bright turquoise light behind the hills, entering the sky vertically whilst the sky next to it thunders and a small portion of it glows with an orangey colour, as if it is on fire. After this there are two men standing beside each other with quite serious facial expressions, the scene is still calm, then suddenly the clips start to appear much faster as if something theatrical is about to happen, a valuable golden ring is shown and a scene with people in a forest; as if they are lost. The sound of the music and the scene is still quite fast and dramatic when a close up of an old man with a long white beard is shown beside a rock, his facial expression looks either sad and regretful or evil; the old man is shown in a rather luminous atmosphere. The clip is then followed by another scene, which consists of two or three dragons flying fiercely down towards a big castle; everything is still happening quite fast and the narrator says “the end has come” whilst a man is heading to climb a set of rocky stairs out in a open space.

The sound of the music is now calm and a scene of beautiful tall green trees is shown with the suns rays passing through the leaves, but before the trees are shown a quote appears saying ‘New Line Cinema’.  The scene remains calm and questions of righteous encouragement are asked in the clips, for example: “what does your heart tell you?” crucial scenes are also shown, such as a man climbing up a cliff which has green light shinning from the rocks below. When the man is still climbing a gremlin speaks and says, “come to Sméagol” lending a hand out to help the man up, but it seems as if he only wants the ring around his neck, as the ring seems to be the purpose of the film.  Whilst the music is still calm, the narrator says “this is your test” fierce scenes are shown, such as faces with anger and revenge; shooting arrows. The music is still very calm and determined whilst scenes of wilderness and war are shown.

Then the music starts to get louder and speed up a little bit, more scenes of bravery are shown, tough decisions are made and the music gets really dramatic and a scene of a bright light, which looked like a turquoise hurricane shooting out of a castle is shown, at the same time the ground shakes and the characters are shown with fearful facial expressions. Then a very large dragon is shown looking angry whilst flapping is wings over the shooting light. The sound of the music gets tenser and warriors on horses, being killed by dragons in an open battle field are shown. After that a fairly shocking scene is shown of a burning orange cat’s eye, on a full sized screen. The music then slows down and sounds of theatrical drum beats are heard, whilst a man holding a sword and lantern is trying to escape from an amazingly overgrown insect inside a tunnel. The music has now slow down and a far, slow shot of a castle and the landscape in front of it and around it is shown. Scenes of fearfulness are seen and a woman crying, a quote is shown saying “this Christmas” and failure of victory in a battle is viewed, with a man crying out loud in misery for his lost ones.  Another quote is shown saying “the journey ends” appears and happier scenes are shown with bright sunshine in the background, and scenes of courage and bravery appear, with over two thousand warriors in a field. The music speeds up and another quote is shown saying, “there can be no triumph without loss”, then a battle field is shown with dead corpses and bodies scattered in it. A distant shot of a man on horse running through a field is viewed; it looks as if he has achieved great victory; then a quote saying “no victory without suffering” is shown, followed by a bird’s eye view of women lying dead on a bed. The music is nervous and a quote saying “no freedom without sacrifice” appears on the screen, the music is very stressed and angry when gigantic elephant like animals are seen, killing people in a battle field.

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The trailer terminates with very loud fast music showing many different scenes, and then finally shows the name of the film, “THE LORD OF THE RINGS- THE RETURN OF THE KING” then the release date is shown, “December 17th” along with the website underneath it.

The second which trailer I had to review and analyse was, “The Gladiator”. This film seems as if it is all about power, determination, victory and success. Most of this trailer is all to do with battles, victory and revenge. There are many clips and scenes from fights and battles in this trailer, but ...

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