SUPERMAN (1978) Movie Trailers

An artist is only as good as his or her tools! I love that saying. It's not true, you know.

Amazing things can be done on a piece of typing paper with a pencil. We all know that. We've all seen it.

Same thing with movies. 

Case in point: the Superman trailer. Superman was a BIG movie with BIG names and was making news for years before it came out. The whole "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly" tagline was exciting and it was a promise to people that they wouldn't see the blue lines around the actor (like George Reeves in the 1950s TV show). It would look real and believable. The only problem was that it was a long trial and error process to make it work.

So when it was time for the first promo teaser spots to come out, there was no footage of a man flying. Matter of fact, most of the film had not yet been shot.

Take a look at the second trailer here in this batch of SUPERMAN previews (one minute in -- uh, I tried to make it start automatically at that point, but I may have not been savvy enough to do that for you): so, you got the great John Williams music, the BIG swooshing names of the cast, the clouds, some footage of a figure standing on the horizon in a Kansas field. No actual Superman, no flying, no Metropolis, no Krypton exploding. But it works, despite not having ANY of the goods that the other trailers have (like actual footage from the movie).



Superman: The Movie (Rare Theatrical Trailers) by NakedBrotha2007

The story of the editor who got stuck with the sow's ear pile of clips and made the silk purse trailer is one I have known for years. I had thought I had heard from my Dad, who heard it from the editor himself. Or so I remember. Contacting dear old Dad this weekend, he couldn't confirm the story. Regardless, it's an example of an artist surpassing the sum of original material to work with, isn't it?