Wuthering Heights is one of those novels that has never grabbed my attention. It’s certainly celebrated and seems like a compelling story, but there hasn’t been a strong enough sell to get someone like me to take the plunge. Granted, I’m not the audience a story like that is directly aiming at, but I always want to leave myself open to fiction that isn’t expressly in my wheelhouse.
Which is why I’m so delighted by the first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Before I saw the trailer, I wasn’t even keeping this movie on my radar. But after watching the Wuthering Heights trailer, I’m not only excited to see what the finished movie will be, but I’m reminded of the job trailers are actually supposed to perform.
Make Your Movie Stand Out
A trailer is rarely a true representation of the finished film these days. Trailers are their own art form at this point and Wuthering Heights took advantage of this to craft an advertisement that felt distinct. The above trailer is a well-crafted piece on its own that solidifies a particular voice for the material. In a sea of expected rhythms and beats with trailers, the Wuthering Heights trailer manages to stick out.
That is a gargantuan success in a world drowning from an ocean of attempts to grab your attention. In order to make a seemingly stuffy, old story feel vibrant and fresh, the Wuthering Heights trailer infused itself with music video style and steam. I can’t speak to whatever the finished movie will be at this point, but this deserves recognition for actually selling me on seeing a movie I had zero interest in.
You know, what trailers are actually supposed to accomplish as opposed to what they mostly function as today.
Trailers Aren’t Doing Their Job
I’m not here to pick apart the Wuthering Heights trailer because that isn’t what a trailer is supposed to encourage in the viewer. We live in a culture now where a trailer is less an attempt at selling a movie and more its own vulturistic ecosystem. Movie studios know how to take advantage of and exploit modern movie culture when it comes to trailers. You think they aren’t maximizing their marketing so a bunch of unimaginative YouTube content mills can farm thumbnails for engagement? That seems to be the real function of trailers these days.
Before we had all the information in the world available at our fingertips, trailers had to be an enormous way to alert people to a movie’s very existence. They had to do so much heavy lifting in regards to informing people. Now, you’ll see intrusive ads and marketing for nearly any major movie as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. Trailers are less of a way to get people knowledgeable about a movie than they are their own little marketing project that succeeds or fails on its own merits. It’s less about selling the movie and more about being a successful trailer.
Which is why I want to celebrate the Wuthering Heights trailer. It certainly abides by modern trailer success metrics but it does so by cutting through the noise and presenting something unique in the landscape. It made me want to see a movie that I didn’t know or care about before. That’s all a trailer really should be striving to get right. It’d be nice to see more of them remember that.
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