The 2025 Trailaurality Awards

Another year has passed, and with it, well over four dozen trailers written up at Trailaurality as part of our weekly review. Film trailers continue to be a fascinating showcase for audiovisual editing techniques that, partly as a result of the genre’s short form and advertorial purpose, strive for memorability and notability. This can be achieved in a variety of ways: some offer remarkable instrumentation; some involve a particularly striking edit. In addition to library and original music, trailers are often the domain of some truly unique cover songs and rearrangements. This latter trend is in particular a hallmark of more recent trailers, with a choral arrangement of Radiohead’s “Creep” for The Social Network (2010) often referred to as a watershed moment. Here are a few trailers released in 2024 that we think are particularly worth a second listen, as this small format continues to advance the craft of editing in measurable ways.

Best Musical Tie-In: Gladiator II

We had many strong nominees for this year’s Best Musical Tie-In category. From the morbid implications of Sinéad O’Connor’s song ‘Never Get Old’ in The Watchers’ trailer, or the prominent climactic placement of Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ in the Wolfs trailer, or the on-the-nose use of Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Gimme the Loot’ in the trailer for the action-comedy heist film The Instigators, many musical tie-ins stood out in 2024. However, the most sublime use of a pre-existing song, licensed for and edited into a trailer that we reviewed this year, had to be Gladiator II trailer’s use of ‘No Church in the Wild’ - an all-star collaboration from Jay-Z, Kanye West and Frank Ocean. With lyrics like “will he make it out alive?” and “blood stains the Colosseum doors” this song feels like it was custom-made in 2024 for this trailer, not released in 2011.

Best Musical: Wicked

Yes, you guessed it, this year’s breakaway winner for Trailaurality’s Best Musical Award goes, of course, to the powerhouse vocal performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, coupled with outstanding underscoring and editing, for the Wicked trailer. As an extended 3 ½ minute trailer which closely follows, in sequence, most of the major moments in the film, this trailer treats us to highlights from both lead’s signature songs: ‘Popular’ for Glinda and ‘Defying Gravity’ for Elphaba. If you have not seen Wicked in theatres yet, don’t miss it!

Best Music Documentary: Music By John Williams

How often do we get a chance to watch a film trailer and hear three of the most famous pieces of film music ever made? Not very often, looking back on all the blogs we’ve done over the years. Often the most famous music used in trailers will be one or at most two pop songs, aimed to make the trailer appealing and memorable. But with this year’s Disney+ release, Music By John Williams, as expected, we are treated to themes from Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Star Wars. In the history of Hollywood film music to date, arguably no other composer has had as broad an impact and influence as Williams, so this trailer, and presumably its film, have some profoundly special music to share.

Best Sound Design: The Substance

From the unsettlingly prominent sound of chewing food–drawing on Korean Mukbang videos–to cartoonish sound effects and the blare of sirens, Coralie Fargeat’s body horror sensation arrived with a trailer that revels in contrast and bombast. Ringing sound and muffled screams—more traditional elements of a horror film soundscape—provide a dynamic counterpoint to the less realistically grounded sonic elements of the trailer, providing, in our estimation, the most memorable trailer of the year in terms of sound design.

Best Music Biopic: A Complete Unknown

Cohesive and understated is the order of the day for Timothée Chalamet’s turn as a young Bob Dylan at the cusp of breakout stardom. In keeping with that idea, rather than turn to a go-to hit such as “Like a Rolling Stone”, in its stead we hear “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. This is revealed at the end of the trailer to be a diegetic, living room performance by Chalamet/Dylan, which is met with a tepid shrug. It’s a compelling way to underplay a person who’s become larger than life, to pare him back to what he was before the veneer and varnish of runaway success.

Best Use of Silence: A Quiet Place: Day One

One might reasonably protest that this award was almost made for the Quiet Place franchise, but silence remains a key component of many a trailer. This new prequel just so happens to position silence at the forefront, unlike any other this year. After a largely atmospheric soundscape grounded in sirens, we get at 1:45 the best example this year of how silence can indeed be deafening; left by itself in the mix, a simple room tone speaks volumes. The silence in the action that follows is stark, while also serving nicely to remind us of the conceit of the whole franchise—that the world has been invaded by aliens capable of ultrasonic hearing, and indeed any sound at all can be deadly.