Classic Trailer Theater: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

I need to start writing more about trailers. Watching more and more of them on YouTube really gets me thinking about it for the first time in a long time. Like who invented the teaser trailer. Trailers are nearly as old as the movies, but what about what we traditionally call a teaser? That's a very early coming attraction for the movie that typically features much less of the plot and characters than a more standard trailer.

Here's a perfect example of a teaser, from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:



Clearly, nothing from that film is ready to show to the public yet. But it's never too early to start selling a movie and so this one does. And it has enough there to get you excited: the big names, that classic score, and a tease of the exotic locales this Indy will head to (through clever recycling of footage from the first film). It's just to let you know it's coming, and really, if you're a Raiders fan (and really, who isn't?) this is going to whet your appetite.

I'm going to try to research and find out if what might be the first true teaser. Wikipedia cites Superman: The Movie, which is just a couple years before Temple of Doom so I'm in the right ballpark.

Also, as a bonus feature, here is Raiders in a few minutes, as a video game. This could have easily prompted its own post about how Raiders has prompted more fan remakes (not fan films of the same universe, but straight-up remakes) than maybe any other movie ever. A couple of kids in suburbia made their own incredible Raiders remake over the course of like five summers and wasted way too much of their lives and time and money on to remarkable effect. Anyway, I digress...