Chris Walsh (chris_walsh) wrote,
Chris Walsh
chris_walsh

I shouldn't work in marketing, Example #5,743

The latest thing to have gone too far: movie trailers using a slow, tragic-sounding cover of a usually upbeat pop song. San Andreas wrecking half of California to the tune of a slower, sadder "California Dreamin'"; Mad Max: Fury Road burning the world to the tune (if you can tell) of Cat Stevens' "Wild World"; an m'f'ing fifth Transformers film, trying (trying, trying) to add dramatic weight with "Do You Realize" by the Flaming Lips...

...and the upcoming Dean Devlin/Jerry Bruckheimer SF disaster film Geostorm — which I actually have some hope for, as I find a lot of Devlin and Bruckheimer's stuff fun, and Devlin co-wrote it with a writer from a show I really like, Leverage — but. This song. THIS SONG.


"What a Wonderful World." OK, it was kind of clever when the original Louis Armstrong version of the song played as the Earth blew up in the teaser trailer for the 2005 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but this slower version being used here, after a few years of this becoming a trope, seems as on-the-nose as a zit. I know, it's marketing, which is magnetically attracted to What Works, but I can be annoyed by it.

And wonder: y'know one way of doing a slower cover that I honestly liked, that I honestly think work, that time Lorde did a disturbing cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" for the film Catching Fire? Imagine Lorde or someone with a similar delivery giving that treatment...

...to The Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch." I now so want this in a trailer. Someone turn this trope on its head, please. Maybe (different approach!) get "Weird Al" Yankovic to sing all breathy and dirge-y but singing lyrics about...hey, he could slow-sing the lyrics to his original song "Happy Birthday":

...Well, it's time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We'll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there's something you can eat
A million people every day are starving in the street

Your daddy's in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama's in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There's garbage in the water
There's poison in the sky
I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die...

You get the idea. SOMEONE DO THIS IDEA. OR THAT OTHER ONE.
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