Last night, at a preview screening of Death Sentence, I saw two trailers in a row that made significant use of sacred music — and all in the service of selling hyperviolent action movies.
First, there was what I presume is the green-band trailer for Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. (Trailers don’t have green bands or red bands in Canada.) It is a lot like the red-band trailer, but with some of the gorier bits cut out — and towards the end, the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ plays over the images of stabbing and shooting and slashing and so on and so forth, while title cards tell us that, this Christmas, “there will be no peace on Earth.” Hmmm.
Curiously, I have not yet been able to find this trailer online.
Second, there was the trailer for the adaptation of the computer game Hitman, which makes use of ‘Ave Maria’. The tune sort of fits, since the title character apparently has ties to some sort of breakaway faction of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but it sort of doesn’t — partly because it comes out of the western musical tradition, and no doubt for a host of other reasons, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyqDo329bs
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.
Both of these films are being distributed by 20th Century Fox, the studio that, on the one hand, put “John 6:27” on some of the posters for Live Free or Die Hard earlier this summer, and, on the other hand, has had mixed success with its Fox Faith brand.
Make of all that what you will.
OCT 3 UPDATE: It took over a month, but the Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem trailer is now finally online at IGN.com.
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