“In a World. One Man. About Five Billion Cigarettes”
The_Archetypal_Hollywood_Voice_Talents used to be amusing. Ridiculous. For a while. They’ve long become an intrinsic part of Hollywood trailers; action, the dumb jokes, the authoritative narration.
Last week I was in London and some friends and I were planning on going to see The Pan’s Labyrinth an interesting Mexican fairy-tale movie about escapism in Franco’s España of the 1940s. This is touted as one of the great independent fairy tale movies of this year. While watching the trailer I found the Hollywood voice extremely annoying — to say the least. The movie is definitely not your typical Hollywood material and the voice seemed completely out of place; not only that, but it ruined the atmosphere of the film.
Funnily enough, Hollywood itself is very well aware of how over-the-top trailer narration usually is. A friend reminded me of the Seinfeld’s Comedian movie trailer I ran into five years ago or so. While — probably — not the most well-known (or decent) of films, the satirical trailer was quite funny, featuring one of the most recognisable voice actors in Hollywood, Hal Douglas, parodying himself.
Also quite funny was the trailer for Hitchhiker’s Guide of The Galaxy that also makes fun of the typical hollywood narration (FF to around 01:00)
And while the former is a semi-independent U.S. comedy and the latter a British film production attempting to carry Adams’ books, wit and style to the big screen, perhaps the most representative depiction of the Hollywood trailer insanity comes from the 1997 trailer for the Hollywood Reporter’s Key Art Awards:
