New Tropic Thunder trailer
Dreamworks has released a new, green-band trailer for Tropic Thunder, starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and more.
Unlike the red-band version previously released this one actually gets into what the movie is about. A group of actors shooting a Vietnam war movie are actually transported to Southeast Asia but aren’t told that they’re in a real conflict. So they continue to act like poncey actors while everyone else thinks they’re actually U.S. soldiers. Oh, and Downey’s character is a white actor playing a black man.
That latter conceit accounts for a fair amount of the gags in the trailer and there’s actually a scene of his character explaining what’s going on. That’s probably because of the mini-outrage that’s cropped up over the idea of whether or not essentially doing blackface is still acceptable, even if it’s done in ironic fashion.
Because this trailer gets into the movie’s plot it works far better for mass audiences than the red-band version, which just showed the war footage without any explanation of what was going on. Not everyone reads all the movie blogs like we do so laying out what the plot is and where the comedy is supposed to come from is a big plus for this one.
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I feel they’re trying to go for what you’ve posted on Cloverfield and The Dark Knight -
Do something for film fans and do something for the general audience. You have the online virals targeted at the film-’nerds’. And next (or parrallel) the regular trailers, teasers, tvspots.
That first Tropic Thunder clip was very much targeted at film fans who have been hearing stuff about this film for quite some time. And now they’ve released the “regular” trailer for general audiences.
This is just a simpler version (so far) of what they’ve done for Cloverfield and TDK.
Why not do something online with each one of the main characters. Build different teaser sites around them, show who they are, what’s funny (or not) about them. And I’m betting they’ve got quite some improv that ended up on the cutting room floor (but could still be funny) which they could use for that as well.