A well-crafted movie trailer is a magical thing to behold. From hearing the first familiar strains of an iconic theme, to seeing a first glimpse at a showstopping setpiece, or witnessing a star’s surprising transformation for their role, the best movie trailers can be miniature works of art in their own right. In 2022, with cinema celebrating its first full year back in business post-COVID, there has been no shortage of top-notch teasers designed to thrill, entice, entertain, and enchant us. Read Empire’s list of the very best trailers that had us talking and adding to our ever-growing watchlist over the last 12 months.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
The first teaser for Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever isn’t just one of 2022’s best film trailers – it’s a bona fide all-timer. Paying poignant tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman’s legacy, the teaser – set to Tems’ soulful cover of ‘No Woman No Cry’, spine-tinglingly segueing into Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ – shows us a Wakanda in mourning the loss of king T’Challa, and seeking a path forwards. Beautifully shot, mesmerically edited, and emotionally charged, it perfectly set the tone for the profound exploration of love, loss, and grief that was to follow.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
If a great ‘legacyquel’ trailer is a balancing act between nostalgic callbacks and fresh ideas, then the title-revealing teaser for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is an expert tightrope walker. The familiar strains of John Williams’ iconic theme, and a grin-inducing climactic whip cracking display classily tip a fedora to Indy adventures past. Elsewhere, the 1969 space race setting, impressive shots of a de-aged Harrison Ford, and first looks at new characters including Mads Mikkelsen’s villainous Voller and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Indy’s goddaughter Helena remind us that it’s never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. Besides, as a wise man once taught us, it’s not the years honey… it’s the mileage. And this one’s got it where it counts. Wait – wrong Harrison Ford character!
M3GAN
Child’s Play’s over, Chucky – there’s a new death-bringing doll on the block and her name is M3GAN! From the moment the internet first saw the murderously loyal emotional-support-android’s killer dance moves in the trailer for Blumhouse’s latest – from the team behind the delightfully batshit Malignant – it was clear horror’s newest icon had arrived. Taylor Swift’s ‘It’s Nice To Have A Friend” makes for darkly humorous accompaniment to scenes of M3GAN chasing a school bully on all fours like a feral animal. Whether it is, in fact, nice to have a friend who may be the AI antichrist remains to be seen – but in trailer form, it’s heavenly.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
After the groundbreaking Into The Spider-Verse, it looks like directing trio Kemp Powers, Joaquin Dos Santos, and Justin Thompson are about to change the game again with the sequel. This first trailer opens on a tender note, with Miles Morales’ mother Rio (Luna Lauren Vélez) monologuing about her boy’s coming-of-age. And then, we’re thrust headfirst into the madness of the Multiverse to meet a veritable who’s-who of Spider-People – Oscar Isaac’s Spider-Man 2099! Issa Rae’s Spider-Woman! Superior Spider-Man! Bombastic Bag-Man! – in an eye-popping kaleidoscope of animation styles. Thwipping brilliant stuff!
Barbie
Making good on the promise that we should expect the unexpected from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, the first trailer for the Lady Bird filmmaker’s paean to all things pink is a doozy. Playfully homaging Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with a Mattelian monolith formed from Barbie’s legs and an inspired tossed-doll match-cut, the teaser offers only the briefest of glimpses at Gerwig’s hyper-stylised fantasia and Margot Robbie in the titular role – but it’s plenty enough to have us hyped for #HotPinkSummer2023. Come on Barbie, let’s go party!
Pearl
Premiering as a post-credit sting to Ti West’s X in cinemas stateside, the trailer for ‘X-traordinary origin story’ Pearl doubled as a surprise reveal that the film audiences had just seen was actually the first instalment in what was then a duology (now a trilogy, with MaXXXine on the way). UK audiences still have to wait til March to see how Mia Goth’s horny old murderess came to be, but the trailer – in all its wacky, technicolour, Wizard Of Oz-riffing glory (spot the scarecrow!) – promises yet another “goddamn fucked up horror picture”.
Deadpool 3
Ryan Reynolds is so adept at breaking the internet these days, he can do it without even leaving the house. From his sofa, he revealed the return of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in the first teaser for Deadpool 3 – a tongue-in-cheek clip in which he exasperatedly admits he’s fresh out of ideas for Wade Wilson’s MCU debut. Then Jackman appears, casually strolling up the stairs in the background, and Reynolds pops the question: “Hey Hugh, wanna play Wolverine one more time?” And with three simple words – “Yeah, sure Ryan” – the entire Marvel fandom lost its chimichangas.
Cocaine Bear
In 1985, a disgraced former DEA agent dropped 75lbs of pure cocaine into Chattahoochee National Forest, where it was promptly chomped down by a bear. Thus, the legend of Cocaine Bear was born. Now, Elizabeth Banks has turned that legend into a "pretty insane" comedy-thriller called – you guessed it – Cocaine Bear, starring the late Ray Liotta, with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on producer duties, and featuring (we cannot stress this enough) a bear on Class A drugs. In the immortal words of Alden Ehrenreich’s character: “The bear… it fucking did cocaine!”
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
“I want to tell you a story. It’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t.” With those simple words from Ewan McGregor’s cricket narrator Sebastian, we were introduced to the dark, beautiful stop-motion world of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. With crooked charm, a haunting Alexandre Desplat score, and scenes promising something more emotionally and thematically rich than past adaptations of the classic fairytale, this first look instantly assured viewers – as if there was ever any doubt – they were safe in the hands of a master craftsman.
Babylon
When La La Land director Damien Chazelle revealed he was making Babylon – a film set during Hollywood’s transition from the silent era to sound – it was fair to assume we’d be in for the modern Singin’ In The Rain. Until that trailer dropped. Evoking both Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, it quickly became clear that Chazelle’s expected love letter to Tinseltown would actually be a lavishly-mounted, debauchery-filled exposé of the era’s excesses and vices. Between the Brad Pitt balcony pratfall, and Margot Robbie’s offer to “fight a fucking snake”, we were in.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
Buckle up, everyone: it’s time to say goodbye to James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. And, if the trailer for Volume 3 is anything to go by, then tissues at the ready folks! Beginning with Peter Quill solemnly announcing the Milano crew will be “gone for a while”, before teasing revelations about Rocket’s heartbreaking past, Gunn’s MCU swansong (before heading up DC Films) looks like it could cement Guardians' place in the pantheon of great film trilogies. At least its one big laugh – Drax chucking a ball directly into a kid’s face – is a real gut-buster.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Galloping horses through the desert, sending steam trains careening off the rails, jumping off motorbikes that are already jumping off cliffs – it’s all in a day’s work for real life action man Tom Cruise. And it’s all in the thrilling trailer for the epically-titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the first half of Ethan Hunt’s supposed last hurrah. The teaser for Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie’s latest collaboration is so spectacularly stunt-tastic that it might even manage to make the mighty Top Gun: Maverick look a little tame in comparison. Cinema’s back, baby!
Nope
With Jordan Peele’s films, the less you know going in, the better. The trailer for sci-fi blockbuster Nope is a lesson in restraint. “What’s a bad miracle?,” Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ Haywood – half of a sibling stunt-horse rearing double act with sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) – asks ominously. Featuring faces turned skyward in terror, power outages, and night skies shot like the sea of Spielberg’s Jaws, nothing is given away here, but there’s no doubt after this we were all desperate to find out.
The Fabelmans
The trend of ‘auteur autofiction’ (as nobody is yet calling it, but we’re coining it now) – a hybrid of autobiography and fiction – has been all the rage in cinema this year, with Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro G Iñárritu, and Kenneth Branagh all reflecting their pasts in their latest projects. Based on its goosebump-incuding first trailer, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans might just be the best of the lot. A love-letter to moviemaking from the man responsible for so many people’s love of movies, the film – boasting a stacked cast including Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, and newcomer Gabriel LaBelle as a Spielberg-proxy – is a real passion project, promising his most personal work to date.
Elvis
The story of “two odd, lonely children reaching for eternity”, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is a rip-roaring, operatic, bright-lights-and-banging-music odyssey chronicling the life, times, toils, and many capes of Elvis Presley as recollected by his manipulative manager, Colonel Tom Parker. This electrifying trailer gave viewers their first real look at Austin Butler’s transformative performance as The King – a razzle-dazzle mini epic in its own right.
65
Like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, the trailer for sci-fi thriller 65 – from A Quiet Place scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Woods – came from seemingly nowhere and made a considerable impact. Produced by Sam Raimi and featuring a stern-faced Adam Driver as an interstellar pilot crash landed on prehistoric Earth, the teaser for this one has it all. Dramatic sirens! Suspicious shadows! A killer twist! If Moonfall failed to satisfy your cravings for sci-fi silliness (yes, still not over it!), we’re hopeful this’ll hit the spot.