[Stop Button Lists] The Ten Best Movie Marketing Campaigns Ever

The Ten Best Movie Marketing Campaigns Ever (or since 1999)

The Avengers (2012, Joss Whedon)
Cloverfield (2008, Matt Reeves)
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
Tron: Legacy (2010, Joseph Kosinski)
Avatar (2009, James Cameron)
The Matrix (1999, Lana and Lilly Wachowski)
Paranormal Activity (2007, Oren Peli)
28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)
The Blair Witch Project (1999, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez)

Stop Button Lists is a new feature. When I thought of it, I wanted something flexible. Possibly scalable, definitely flexible. The first week’s post discussed a top ten list from thirty-five years ago, last week’s post looked at home video releases; those same films will be discussed in a different context in a coming post–see what I mean by flexible?

The idea is to look at different containers and how their contents relate to both the container and the other entries. The first week’s list was created by a single person, the second week’s list came from LaserDisc release dates. Containers can made in many different ways.

So for this post, I thought about doing an entirely different kind of container. I wanted to look at the most successful movie marketing campaigns and talk about those films. However, with the exception of an “AdWeek” article I couldn’t motivate myself to read, most such lists appear not on film or business sites, but on desperate-for-profit clickbait nonsense sites.

Cillian Murphy stars in 28 DAYS LATER, the eighth best marketed film of all time, directed by Danny Boyle for Fox Searchlight Pictures.

On WhatCulture, which pays its authors based on pageviews (but nothing upfront), I found two lists with the same title. “10 Best Movie Marketing Campaigns Ever.” Two different authors, two months apart. I went with the list where I’d seen seventy percent of the films. And I wrote a post about the list.

Try as I might not to attack the bad choices, there was nowhere else to go with it. The list’s creator wasn’t interested in a conversation about the effectiveness of movie marketing, he wanted to get paid. He didn’t see a penny until he got a thousand hits or whatever.

I’m not a stranger to figuring out what will, based on available data, get the best Google results. I do it a little bit with the tags on the site now, trying to conform to existing Google keywords. So I’m not above being mercenary, I just try not to be intrusive with it.

And this list is intrusive. It plays its reader, who’s not just getting played for reading the article, but giving the hits–clicking between each photo to get to the next part of the post. Just reading it requires, through UI, a lot of commitment.

So the list has to be worth it. Either to enrage or to validate.

Once I got through a draft of the post, I couldn’t forgive the lack of research on the list. Analysis would actually be interesting, looking at a bunch of different factors. But WhatCulture isn’t about providing brief scholarly posts, it’s about getting hits.

A scene from THE DARK KNIGHT, directed by Christopher Nolan for Warner Bros. Its marketing campaign encouraged people to dress as The Joker and emulate the character’s psychotic behavior.

And putting The Avengers, The Dark Knight and Avatar on a list are going to get some hits. I’m still surprised how much of a readership boost I got around the time of my Avengers post on all the related films. It has enthusiastic fans who read about it.

That anecdote aside, The Avengers gets an average of approximately half a million searches a month. It’s a good search term for the list getting seen. And Dark Knight and Avengers are probably mutually exclusive, so you’d get both. Ditto Avatar. The list has its franchises, but it has different ones, ones with divisive fan bases. Except maybe Avatar, does it have divisive fan base factions?

The list is cautious, calculated. Does anyone really remember if A.I. had a good marketing campaign? The argument for The Matrix having one is a little strange; I remember when it was the zeitgeist and it seemed like it was ironic theater-going turned into a sincere regard for the film, not because of marketing. Of course, I only was excited to see it because it was from the makers of Bound.

Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund star in TRON: LEGACY, directed by Joseph Kosinski for Walt Disney Pictures. The film was marketed to tech savvy fans of the original film, which unfortunately excluded Homer Simpson, the only person to champion the original.

Tron: Legacy? It had a bunch of cool marketing things, but the movie didn’t hit the way it was supposed to hit. It was quickly forgotten; Disney even cancelled plans for Tron 3. Why’s it on the list? To get hits, because lots of people though the movie looked or sounded cool.

The silliest entries on the list are Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield. It’s all the same thing–viral marketing where participating in that marketing is part of the film’s “experience.” Of the three films, Paranormal Activity–which I’ve never heard anyone talk about–is the most successful in the long run. Blair Witch immediately fizzled as did Cloverfield, but nowhere near as spectacularly.

I pruned the list in my first draft–a la George Carlin and the Ten Commandments–and even planned on doing something similar here. I wanted to look at why the movies got cut. But, really, there isn’t a point to it. It’s a pointless list. The goal of this post is, well, put simply, to make points out of pointlessness.

Hopefully, I succeeded. Otherwise, thanks for sticking it out.

[Stop Button Lists] John Carpenter on LaserDisc, 1994-98

John Carpenter films, 1976-82, released on LaserDisc, 1994-98

source: LaserDisc Database

7 June 1994 • Escape From New York (1981) • New Line Home Video
18 October 1995 • The Fog (1980) • Image Entertainment
9 November 1996 • Halloween (1978) • The Criterion Collection
12 March 1997 • Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) • Image Entertainment
9 August 1998 • The Thing (1982) • Universal Studios Home Video

When I was fifteen, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for John Carpenter fans. Maybe more than his fans, it was a very good year for his reputation. He was coming off Memoirs of an Invisible Man, his most mainstream film in eight years and it had bombed hard. But in June of 1994, when New Line Home Video released Escape From New York on LaserDisc in a collector’s edition, as well as on VHS with a “director’s special edition,” which had some of the same features. But was also pan and scan.

I was vaguely familiar with Carpenter. I had seen and liked The Thing (after years of hearing it was terrible), I had seen and liked Starman (it was a family favorite), I had seen and did not like Halloween (after years of hearing it was the only good slasher movie), I had seen and did not care for Big Trouble in Little China (if you had a friend with HBO in the late eighties, you saw Big Trouble a lot), I had seen and did not care for Memoirs of an Invisible Man. I was, in my younger days, quite the Chevy Chase fan.

A scene from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, directed by John Carpenter for Embassy Pictures.

One of the guys at the video store sent me home with the Escape From New York special edition VHS. I was back the next day to buy it. I think with scrounged together pennies. I made my mom and sister watch it with me either that night or immediately following. I loved Escape From New York.

And I started seeing other Carpenter films, so by October 1995, when I had moved from “special edition” VHS tapes to my own LaserDisc collection, I bought The Fog sight unseen. And I watched it. Probably twice in a row, the second time with the commentary. And it got me to appreciate Carpenter’s filmmaking. I would have shown the Fog (on LaserDisc in its glorious Panavision OAR) to my friends. I might have even made my sister watch it. I loved The Fog.

Then came Escape From L.A.. Wait, what? A fifteen years late sequel. Kurt Russell, on a second career high, got to bring back Snake Plissken. He and Carpenter palling around for the Escape From New York commentary got their wheels spinning. I saw it opening night. And I loved it, which is really embarrassing because it’s terrible.

A scene from HALLOWEEN, directed by John Carpenter for Compass International Pictures.

That November–I guess Criterion couldn’t make it happen for Halloween–they released a special edition of Halloween. CAV LaserDisc. The film was now legitimized. And I’d seen it a few times. And I still didn’t like it. Whenever I finally bought the LaserDisc (not at release), I had done so for the special features. I wanted that Carpenter, Debra Hill and Jamie Lee Curtis commentary. I knew his commentary tracks were awesome.

(Halloween is still my least favorite Carpenter film of this era, even if it is better than The Fog).

Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston star in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, directed by John Carpenter for Turtle Releasing.

In February of 1997, Image released Assault on Precinct 13, which I think I saw right away and hated the cover art for the LaserDisc. I tried transferring the commentary and effects track to Sony MiniDisc. I was a commentary fiend back then. And, of course, I loved Precinct 13.

Carpenter didn’t disappear–I couldn’t wait for Vampires, which teamed him with James Woods, another of my nineties enthusiasms–but I did have to wait. Its distribution was a nightmare of looking through “Entertainment Weekly” or maybe reading “Dark Horizons” hoping for good news. But it was a time for appreciating old Carpenter, not new.

And then, in August 1998, Universal Studios Home Video released The Thing in a Signature Collection LaserDisc release. Universal made some great LaserDiscs, but usually of popular films. The Thing had been a box office failure. But Carpenter was draw on LaserDisc–his Panavision composition can’t be pan and scanned well. All these special editions with the great commentaries would introduce Carpenter to a whole new audience–the casual home video consumer, trying out the new DVD format. All these LaserDisc special editions soon became early DVD special editions.

A scene from THE THING, directed by John Carpenter for Universal Pictures.

These films–and these LaserDisc releases–forged Carpenter’s ironclad reputation as a filmmaker. No matter how many Children of the Damned or Memoirs he made, no matter how crappy remakes of his films got, no matter how many times Anchor Bay released Halloween on DVD, Carpenter’s reputation leaped out of the hole Memoirs dug. No one liked Memoirs. Even with awesome special effects as CG-appreciation became a mainstream fixation, no one liked Memoirs. I’m sort of scared I liked Memoirs in the theater now, because I remember renting it on VHS and I have no idea why I would have done such a terrible thing.

These five Carpenter films still get all the hype–they’re still the ones in the public consciousness, whether through remakes or awesome new Shout! Factory blu-ray special editions. The commentary tracks usually make it over too, which is fantastic. Not quite the same thing as Criterion putting out Halloween and forcing it into the film enthusiast consciousness (complete with a reassuring clip of Siskel and Ebert explaining why it’s okay to like Halloween), but the content is out there for people to discover. It’s just the community isn’t there, which is too bad.

As for Carpenter, he just put out an album, Lost Themes. I love it.

[Stop Button Lists] Siskel’s Ten Best of 1980

The Ten Best Films of 1980, Gene Siskel

source: The Chicago Tribune

Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese)
Ordinary People (1980, Robert Redford)
Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980, Michael Apted)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978, Ermanno Olmi)
Kagemusha (1980, Kurosawa Akira)
Being There (1980, Michael Apted)
The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)
The Blues Brothers (1980, John Landis)
The Great Santini (1979, Lewis John Carlino)
The Stunt Man (1980, Richard Rush)