Crafting a cracking movie trailer is a fine art – boil a film down to its essence in a few short minutes, leave the best bits unspoiled, spruce up the editing, and pick a song to rattle around in audiences’ heads for weeks. We’ve chosen the best movie trailers of 2018, the ones that kept us looking forward to the next cinematic treat all year long and into the next. Watch them below.
Read Empire’s Biggest Movie News Of 2018 here.
Avengers: Infinity War
Shortly before it hit cinemas, the full Infinity War trailer gave a thrilling tease of Marvel’s epic, pulling together every corner of the MCU to date. Tony and the Guardians! Spider-Man and Doctor Strange! Cap stopping Thanos with his bare (ok, gloved) hands in Wakanda! All that, and it even set up the snap without us guessing the film would take us there. A smart trailer of bombast and carefully-planted deceptions.
Avengers: Endgame
From the infinite, to the endgame – around six months after Infinity War’s gut-punch climax, Marvel finally teased what’s coming next. But rather than dialling in on the Avengers’ Thanos-thumping plans, the first Endgame trailer is low on action, high on emotion and consequence. Tony records a dying message for Pepper. Thanos strolls through his new world. Cap, Black Widow and Bruce Banner take stock of their losses. Hawkeye shows off a shocking new look as Ronin. And Ant-Man brings a gag. That’s all, folks – but it’s the perfect amount to show, a bold and confident glimpse into the future. If only Doctor Strange was still around to send us straight there.
Listen to the Empire Podcast: Avengers Endgame Trailer Special episode here.
Suspiria
The final result proved divisive, but our first look at Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining of Suspiria conjured an incredibly unsettling atmosphere (kudos, Thom Yorke) with its hypnotic dance sequences, beautifully muted cinematography, and that brash typeface writ large. A teaser that at once evokes the Argento original while promising a truly alternative remake.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
It’s never wise to underestimate Tom Cruise. And yet in a Super Bowl year that gave us fresh trailers for Solo: A Star Wars Story, Infinity War, and A Quiet Place, as well as an entire new Cloverfield film, we still didn’t expect Mission: Impossible – Fallout to steal the show. But that first trailer is an absolute marvel, stoking up a sense of foreboding and setting up the jaw-dropping next-level action sequences that made it our second favourite film of 2018. The Baby Driver-esque editing, matching blows from the bathroom fight to the beat of Imagine Dragons’ ‘Friction’, is a master-stroke – and it was our first exposure to Henry Cavill’s incredible fist-reload. Pulse-pounding stuff.
Mid90s
UK audiences are still waiting for Jonah Hill’s skate-slacker directorial debut – in the meantime, this trailer is on repeat. From its pleasingly retro 16mm film stock to its era-precise cultural nods – Stevie’s Ren & Stimpy and Street Fighter II t-shirts, his older brother’s Wu-Tang poster, that fish-eye lens skate footage – the trailer promises a personal-epic that revels in the period of Hill’s own youth, a coming-of-age story that brings to mind Richard Linklater, Harmony Korine and Larry Clark. It’s the musical choices that work best – Wendy Rene’s ‘After Laughter (Comes Tears)’ flowing into that song’s eventual sampling on Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Tearz’, before exploding into the emotive guitars of ‘Gyöngyhajú lány’ by Hungarian band Omega, so memorably sampled in the outro of Kanye West’s ‘New Slaves’. A pitch-perfect tease for Hill’s first film.
Godzilla: King Of The Monsters
Another trailer that absolutely excels in its choice of music. Godzilla: King Of The Monsters looks all set to revel in the kaiju carnage, but the trailer unveiled at San Diego Comic Con brings spine-tingling chills with Debussy’s ‘Clair De Lune’ soundtracking all those beautiful shots of Mothra, Ghidorah and Rodan – and the big lizard himself, of course. It’s a trailer that still channels the spirit of Gareth Edwards’ 2014 reboot while ramping up the action, finding mythical beauty as well as horror in those fantastic beasts.
Captain Marvel
With a bang, Carol Danvers crashes into the ‘90s – through a Blockbuster Video, appropriately enough – in the first look at her Marvel Cinematic Universe introduction. Brie Larson’s intergalactic soldier gets a hype-stoking trailer revealing a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson (with both eyes!), a young Agent Coulson and some explosive cosmic powers. All that, and she smacks an OAP in the face – although we’re pretty sure that’s a shape-shifting Skrull. Right?
Bohemian Rhapsody
The promotion for Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury biopic smartly front-loads those beloved Queen songs, blending them into mega-mix mash-ups that collide the iconic melodies. Just as the more rote studio footage starts to underwhelm, in whomps the ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ bassline, then the stomp-stomp-clap of ‘We Will Rock You’, followed by the soaring vocal of ‘We Are The Champions’ – a three-pronged attack to have fans old and new lining up to do the fandango. Whatever that means.
Bad Times At The El Royale
Right from its opening needle-drop on The Isley Brothers’ Motown hit ‘This Old Heart Of Mine’, the first trailer for Drew Goddard’s noir-mystery pastiche is note-perfect, promising a vibrant and playful thriller from a filmmaker who knows genre inside-out. The spot-on retro set design, starry cast of shadowy customers, and tantalising teases about the titular hotel’s secrets instantly shot El Royale up our must-see list. Bonus points for Cynthia Erivo’s flat-out amazing singing.
The Meg
The Meg. It’s Jason Statham versus a giant shark. The trailers and marketing seemed to understand that even better than the resulting film did. All together now: “My god… it’s a megalodon!”
Roma
From the ridiculous, to the sublime: this tender teaser for Alfonso Cuarón’s latest perfectly balances the film’s intimate focus and epic scope, achingly personal and studded with arresting imagery. A gorgeous showcase for that stunning black-and-white photography, practically begging you to see it on the big screen (if you’re lucky enough to have Netflix releasing it in a cinema near you).
Shazam!
The DC Extended Universe began in a dour place, mired in the murk of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice – but post-Wonder Woman it continues moving towards the light. Nowhere is that more apparent than Shazam!’s trailer, finding middle-ground between the grown-up wish-fulfillment of Big and the giddy teen superheroics of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Debuted at Comic-Con, the teaser pops with witty lines, fun visual gags, and what looks to be a delightful central performance by Zachary Levi, perfectly cast as DC’s big kid.
Upgrade
A grungy, ‘80s-inspired Blumhouse B-movie in a summer of franchise behemoths, Upgrade boasts arresting visuals of its own – namely, the camera snapping to Logan Marshall-Green’s tech-enhanced Grey as he brutally beats up baddies. The trailer dangles the film’s gloriously violent brawls like a juicy carrot, conjuring the likes of Robocop and The Terminator without flat-out remaking or sequelising them.
Sorry To Bother You
The searing trailer for Boots Riley’s mind-melting satire made the long wait for its arrival all the more tortuous – even if it leans into the film’s lighter first half, holding back the really weird and wild stuff for paying audiences. Within a few minutes, it pitches the film’s heightened reality, visual playfulness, and core anti-capitalist themes, all sprinkled with laugh-out-loud gags. In a microcosm of the full feature, Sorry To Bother You’s trailer demanded audiences sit up and take notice of one of 2018’s most memorable movies.
A Quiet Place
How do you sell a near-dialogue-free horror film? Craft a near-dialogue-free trailer, setting up John Krasinski’s silent post-apocalypse through imagery and text cards alone. With only fleeting glimpses of the film’s beasties and merely hinting at the threat they pose, the A Quiet Place trailer shows just the right amount to hook audiences in without revealing the film’s best moments – and when Emily Blunt finally speaks (in a heartbroken whisper), it’s all the more effective.
Deadpool 2
Of course Deadpool couldn’t introduce Cable without couching it in a meta-joke – here, the CGI on Josh Brolin’s time-travelling cyborg isn’t done yet, forcing Wade Wilson to faff around with some action figures until the effects are finished. An exciting look at the sequel’s coolest new character, and further proof that Deadpool 2 would be as Deadpool as possible.
Spies In Disguise
First it looks a bit like The Incredibles, with a dash of James Bond, bundled up with that classic Will Smith charm. And then the trailer announcing Blue Sky’s latest animation pulls a twist so unexpected, so head-spinning, so out of the blue that there’s no way we won’t be seeing Spies In Disguise – if only to figure out how this whole damn thing ties together. Not watched it yet? You really aren’t prepared.