In evaluating a new Godzilla or King Kong trailer, subtle is probably not the first word that comes to mind. Yet, last time we did so in 2019, we found trailer music houses Alloy Tracks and Imagine Music supplying interesting, trailerized takes on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and "Claire de Lune,” respectively. Doing so almost humanized the creatures, focusing on their majesty and beauty in a way that brought out the sublime in them. Seeing that in Japan they are known as kaiju—strange beasts—it was a nod to the heritage of the franchise.

Not so much for this trailer, however: This is a crossover that more closely resembles a fantasy round of Ultimate Fighting Championship—a stark change that didn’t go unnoticed in the YouTube comments for the above video.

Coming up on a full year of the first pandemic wave last March, the trailer for Locked Down will look—and sound—familiar to anyone accustomed to the work-from-home lifestyle: A ringtone and the notification that someone’s entered the room in Zoom (replete with the potato camera quality of laptops, to match).

It’s been a year (or rather, what feels like many years), but despite the all-but-closure of movie theatres around the world, the industry has managed to soldier on, perhaps most obviously through an accelerated shift to streaming services. Disney+ has received multiple exclusives (Mulan, Soul) once designated for the silver screen. Elsewhere, the entire Warner Bros slate has moved to HBO Max, gaining exclusives like Dune and the much-anticipated fourth instalment of the Matrix series (albeit not without vocal grumbling by the Christopher Nolans of the world).

In the midst of such a sea change in economics and strategy, it’s worth asking whether this has changed the shape of trailers that are now predominantly Netflix-native. The short answer? Not so much. In fact, the service that dared most to be different, Quibi, was something we found to be simply watered-down rather than innovative, per se—and that assessment was born out after a paltry six-month shelf life.

This is not to say that 2020 didn’t feature a rich assortment of uniquely persuasive, tightly-edited bites of sound and image, however. Let’s run down some of the highlights.

Our first trailer review of the new year is a simpler one, but it shows that simplicity can be effective. It’s a minute-and-a-half in length, but no time is wasted as the music is closely cut to moments from the film to portray a very rough sketch of the plot. Due in part to its brevity and lack of dialogue, the music is arguably more critical than ever as a device both to propel the narrative and maintain audience interest.

The Radiohead classic “No Surprises”, from 1998’s OK Computer, enters at 0:23 after being given a custom orchestrated introduction. Stems are certainly being used, as there is also a countermelody in the strings against the clean guitar line that wasn’t present in the original recording.

Equinox is an upcoming Netflix mini-series that is cut from a similar cloth to Stranger Things or Dark, subtracting the 80s nostalgia and adding some Nordic flair. The tagline—“there’s another reality behind the one we’re living in”—is certainly evocative of the aforementioned series. With Tea Lindeburg directing, it promises to be a bit more subtle, with the trailer’s sound design confirming that.

Following a successful reboot of the show on Cartoon Network from 2014-2019 and now on Boomerang, Tom and Jerry is a bid to carefully scale and translate that success to the big screen.

Steven Soderbergh’s latest leans in on his historical strengths, both with leveraging an ensemble cast (as in the Ocean’s series) as well as his penchant for exploring the frontiers of independent or auteur filmmaking (such as his last release, Unsane, predicated in part on the self-imposed constraint of filming entirely on smartphones). For Let Them All Talk, the conceit is right there in the title: Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Dianne Wiest on a cruise ship together, under the guide of Streep as an author taking pains to figure out her next book.

Arriving by way of Amazon Prime Video, Small Axe is an anthology of five films directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, 2013).

It’s been said on this blog before, but the past few years have shaped up to be something of a minor Renaissance for musician biopics. Besides Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody and a cavalcade of lesser-knowns, we now have one for the inimitable Frank Zappa by way of Magnolia Pictures, with Alex Winter (yes, that Alex Winter, of Bill & Ted fame) directing.

Mank is a biopic on the life of Herman J Mankiewicz (aka Mank), best known as the co-writer of the seminal Citizen Kane. Mank faced both personal challenges and creative differences with the director and producer of Citizen Kane, Orson Wells; this film promises to explore both.

Starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Chris Rock, and directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), The Witches is a 2020 take on the 1983 novel and its original 1990 film adaptation. The trailer achieves memorability and poignancy by not just taking an existing song and trailerizing (or covering) it, but rather, does so by first laying out the constituent elements before bringing them together, as a sort of exposition of musical subversion.

Landing on Amazon Prime one week before the US election, Sacha Baron Cohen is reprising his role as the Kazakh national Borat, a character whose earnestness is steeped in satire.

Making its premiere September 6th at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sound of Metal is a visceral and touching exploration of what it is like to experience hearing loss. Drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is forced to confront this disability with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). As first-time director Darius Marder puts it, it’s an exploration of “what happens when you strip away who you think you are.”

From Denis Villeneuve as a directorial follow-up to 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, this remake of Dune takes David Lynch’s 1984 original and reimagines it with today’s special effects and aesthetic sensibilities.

The latest trailer for The Batman recently premiered at DC FanDome, and with it comes an unlikely collaboration. Composer Michael Giacchino has added an array of accoutrements to a lesser-known track in the catalogue of 90s rock group Nirvana.

Justice League was first released in 2017, but practically since then, the “#ReleasetheSnyderCut” campaign continually lobbied for original director Zack Snyder’s take on the film. He originally was forced to step aside after a family tragedy, with Joss Whedon (The Avengers) taking the helm. Late last year, the Twitter campaign reached a fever pitch. This, possibly in combination with the need to promote the new HBO Max streaming service as well as the punishing economics around theatre-going for the foreseeable future, has led to this special Director’s Cut being realized.

By way of Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) comes the equally-unsettling i’m thinking of ending things (sic). Based on the 2016 novel by Canadian writer Iain Reid, this adaptation stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, and Toni Collette (the latter having starred in The Sixth Sense and Little Miss Sunshine). Although Kaufman’s previous work obviously delved into the unique and unusual, he hasn’t quite entered thriller territory until now. As a result, this trailer puts a highly artistic twist on horror and thriller trailer conventions. Usually, in horror trailers we hear ominous sound design, perhaps a creepy musical theme, and definitely one—or, more likely, multiple—jump scares, reinforced of course with a scream or sudden, loud sound of some sort. Here, we hear little of that type—instead, this trailer takes benign sounds and renders them as remarkably disconcerting.