Here’s a list of the worst days of my life:
- 22 January every year
- May 20th, the start of my finals
- July 16th, the day I saw the trailer of the upcoming movie, Superstar
First and foremost let’s define a trailer to see if Superstar fits the description.
The website, Back Tracks defines a trailer as:
Trailers refer to short previews of a piece of content, such as a movie trailer, which demonstrates scenes and the general plot and mood of a piece of media, in order to garner interest.
For me at least, Mahira Khan’s Superstar trailer fails – if not to provide the general plot, then to do it properly.
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Take the first 26 seconds and then compare them to 2:17 seconds in; they both have extremely varying themes. The first 26 seconds are somewhat reminiscent of an adventure movie; a star struck girl with big hopes and a struggling guy trying to make it together. Then by the time you’ve gotten to the 2 minutes mark you’ve seen it all: comedy, romance, action and are left incredibly confused about what to expect from the film at all!
Sure, you can have a good mix of genres in the movie and still manage good results but a trailer needs to be short and to the point to grab the attention of the viewer. Multiple genres in a 3 minute trailer are really hard to follow and just end-up discouraging the viewer from making an effort to understand what’s going on.
This relates to the second problem: failure to give a proper plot. The genre of a movie is easily inferred when it gives a proper plot. But the 10 times that i watched the trailer (!) I could only piece out the fact that there was a girl called Noori, a dude called Sameer Khan and that they were either in love, hated each other or both and that they were actors.
Compare this to the short, Avengers: Endgame trailer in which Captain Marvel first meets with the Avengers. Within a few seconds, we sense the general mood of the movie, the pain of the characters and their anger.
A more desi example of a beautiful trailer can be that of The Legend of Maula Jatt. Even without the narration someone who watches the trailer is immediately clear on the type of movie it will be.
Now, I must give credit where credit is due. The first 25 seconds of Bilal Ashraf and Mahira Khan’s Superstar trailer had me in love. The film seemed sweet and simple; I wish the editor hadn’t lost the momentum that he had successfully captured at the beginning. The soundtrack doesn’t sound half bad either and I’d like to give it a shot. But that’s about it; this is where my list of “what worked” ends.
However, that’s just my opinion. I really hope the actual film follows the adventure/romance type of theme we got to see in the first few seconds and it’s not a mesh of genres that the trailer reflected it to be.