5 Controversial Trailer Song Choices We Will Never Forgive
Crafting a movie trailer is an art form in itself. In roughly 90 seconds, a movie has to be sold to an audience who may otherwise have no idea what the project is about. Characters have to be introduced, and a general sense of the plot has to be provided (but not too much, lest the trailer give away everything). An easy way to provide a sense of the overall tone is to include a solid musical accompaniment.
Some trailers have exceptional music choices. The trailer for "The Social Network" contains an all-time great choice with a haunting choral arrangement of Radiohead's "Creep." Action movies may have something to get the blood pumping, while comedies may opt for a sillier, more modern pop song. And then there are the trailer song choices that make zero sense whatsoever.
Certain film trailers fail to get audiences talking about an upcoming film because everyone's so focused on why the song was chosen. This can include songs that don't seem to have anything to do with the tone or plot. Or worse, a trailer can use a song that seems diametrically opposed to what the movie's trying to convey. Here are five trailers that swung for the fences with their song choices only to miss in epic fashion, as determined by a writer who watches every trailer that comes out and has way too many opinions about every minute detail.
Kanye West's I Am a God in the Assassin's Creed trailer
Numerous movie trailers have used Kanye West songs in the past, which means all of them instantly don't age well, given the numerous problematic aspects of the rapper's life in recent years. However, while such music works tonally with many of these videos, it sticks out like a sore thumb in the 2016 trailer for "Assassin's Creed." The video game adaptation starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard clearly wanted something epic for the action-packed, time-transplanting adventure. The result is something that just doesn't mesh well and angered most fans of the franchise.
For starters, the lyrics just don't match. The first words out of West's mouth are "I am a god," but the assassins in this world aren't gods. They have great powers, but it doesn't line up. Plus, something just feels off about hearing a 21st-century song amid 15th-century battles. Anachronistic song choices aren't inherently bad, but given all the great music found in the "Assassin's Creed" games, one would surmise there would be something usable there to get fans on board.
The song choice was so despised that one fan even replaced it with "Ezio's Family" from "Assassin's Creed II." The result is a drastically different tone, making the "Assassin's Creed" movie feel epic and profound rather than just another action movie.
Lil Nas X's Old Town Road in the Rambo: Last Blood trailer
John Rambo's (Sylvester Stallone) last cinematic excursion was 2019's "Rambo: Last Blood." It sees the worn Vietnam vet trying to live a peaceful life but then getting drawn into yet another bloody conflict when he goes to battle a Mexican cartel after it kidnaps someone close to him. It's a violent affair, seemingly aimed at an older crowd who grew up on Rambo movies and wants to see Stallone kick butt as the character for potentially the last time. In direct contrast to that aesthetic, the trailer is punctuated by the hottest TikTok song of 2019 — "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X.
"Old Town Road" is admittedly a silly song, making it perfect for kids to dance and lip-sync to on social media. But one has a hard time believing John Rambo would've even heard of such a track. In fact, if you showed Rambo TikTok, he'd probably think the next generation isn't worth saving. The decision to use this particular song almost seems to come down to having the lyric "I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road" over an image of Rambo riding a horse. Get it?
Additional instrumentals used in the trailer give the song more of an "epic" feel, pretty much in direct contrast to what the song was in the first place. A fun song about riding horses is played over imagery of Rambo slaughtering hordes of people. It seems an odd way to close the book on John Rambo when a song like "Hurt" by Johnny Cash may have been more appropriate (but maybe the trailer didn't want to rip off "Logan").
Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise in the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer
Sonic the Hedgehog has been a beloved video game icon for decades. Adapting him into a live-action movie should've been a slam dunk. Just take what people love about the games and transpose them into a narrative story. But when the first "Sonic the Hedgehog" trailer dropped, it was an abomination.
Let's set aside the absurd design known as "Ugly Sonic," which required "Sonic the Hedgehog" to be delayed so that it could be fixed. Let's just focus on the song choice, namely "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio. Why is that there? Sonic's not a gangsta. He likes chili dogs, not walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It's tonally inconsistent with the fun vibe the trailer clearly wants to show off, resulting in a mind-boggling aesthetic where you just have to wonder who was in charge of all this.
The only possible explanation is that the trailer wanted a general '90s aesthetic. The first "Sonic" game came out in 1991. Jim Carrey, who plays Dr. Robotnik, was popular in the 1990s. It's possible they wanted a song that encapsulated the decade too, which is fine, but there are so many options other than "Gangsta's Paradise." This is just a pitch, but what about "The Distance" by Cake? It's from 1996 and has lyrics like "He's going for speed." It's a much better Sonic song, and that's after putting only, like, 10 seconds of thought into it.
Ursine Vulpine's Do You Realize in the Transformers: The Last Knight trailer
One of the most annoying trends in modern movie trailers is taking a slowed-down cover of a famous song. It's basically a cheat code to make a trailer feel significant while still having lyrics viewers will recognize. But sometimes, a cover is antithetical to what the movie should really be about, which is why it's baffling to have "Do You Realize?" in the trailer for "Transformers: The Last Knight."
The original song is by The Flaming Lips, but the cover is from Ursine Vulpine. It's slow and methodical, and much like in "Rambo: Last Blood," it feels like the song was chosen for one specific lyric. In this instance, it's "We're floating in space" playing over Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) floating through space. Again, this is for a Transformers movie. It's about robots that turn into cars and hit each other. But the action takes a backseat to Flaming Lips' lyrics over Anthony Hopkins ruminating on the nature of the universe.
In a way, the song choice is a prime example of what's wrong with the movie as a whole. Why is a Transformers movie dealing with Merlin and Excalibur? It's become too grandiose and self-serving for its own good. This probably doesn't get said too often, but it's okay for dumb movies to exist. And Transformers movies should be the dumbest movies around. Just have them be fun without getting wrapped up in cosmic meditations, and it's all good.
Imagine Dragons' Believer in the Murder on the Orient Express trailer
The trailer for Kenneth Branagh's "Murder on the Orient Express" starts out as a perfectly fine setup for a murder mystery. A tense piece of score music even comes in to punctuate how murder most foul is afoot. But then ... something odd happens. The trailer transitions to the flighty beat found in Imagine Dragons' "Believer" as viewers meet the suspects one by one. It'd be easy to say the issue is the anachronistic song choice, seeing as the film is set in 1934. But there's something stranger still at play.
After Hercule Poirot (Branagh) introduces himself, it cuts to the title of the film right when the song crescendos with the chorus. The result is a peculiar juxtaposition between a bombastic pop-rock track and a contemplative detective story. One feels more prepared to chug a Coors than solve a mystery when listening to Imagine Dragons. It almost makes it feel like a fan-made trailer from someone who somehow wanted to listen to "Believer" more often even when it wasn't being played incessantly on the radio.
Love them or hate them, Imagine Dragons is incredibly popular, so it's easy to see why the band's songs have been used in many trailers. But it's plain bizarre in an Agatha Christie adaptation. It makes no sense and gives the impression the trailer simply wanted to use a song popular at the time rather than something that enhanced the mood of the story. At least the trailer for "Death on the Nile" had the good sense to use a Depeche Mode song, which goes so much harder.