You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Thor: Ragnarok the motion picture

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
It’ll be a good one this time!

This is a damn impressive movie trailer – and it’s a trailer that needed to be damn impressive.

Prior to Ragnarok, the Thor film series wasn’t terribly popular. People liked Chris Hemsworth in the title role, and a lot of people loved Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but the films themselves were generally seen as being on the lower rung compared to their Marvel superhero brethren. For a long time, Thor: The Dark World was the most common answer to “what’s the worst Marvel Studios movie?”

So in getting people hyped for the third film in the series, this trailer had its work cut out … and boy did it deliver!

Start off with an intriguing event to get people hooked: in this case, having Thor’s signature weapon, which is supposed to be impossible for anyone unworthy to wield, being casually caught and crushed by our new villain.

Then, show people all the money on screen: here, that means basically becoming a Led Zeppelin music video, with the music set to a mix of the films most visually beautiful shots and closeups of all the big name guest stars, including the reveal that, hey, the Hulk’s in this!

Finally, close with a joke: I know that Marvel’s style of bathos humor (particularly as found in the recent Thor films) has been getting some backlash lately, but after all that dramatic build up, punctuating it with Thor’s ecstatic “YES!” and “We know each other! He’s a friend from work!” … just a great way to have people come away from the trailer feeling like this flick’s gonna be fun.

Regardless of what you feel about Thor: Ragnarok as a movie, it’d be hard to argue that this isn’t a superbly done trailer.