24 Years On, Hollywood Needs To Resurrect The Most Notorious Part Of Spider-Man Movie History

24 years ago, a Spider-Man trailer – for Sam Raimi’s first game-changing chapter in his trilogy – was etched into Hollywood history when real world events led to its removal from theaters. Accidental controversy aside, though, the trailer was an important example of a celebration of movies that Hollywood has, for some reason, turned its back on.For decades, trailers have inspired excitement in moviegoers and functioned as their own glorious artform. Granted, these entities have evolved drastically over the years, as signaled by the very term “trailers” referring to how these promotional bits used to play after a movie rather than before.

Meanwhile, trailers in the ’70s and ’80s used to have slower pacing and more voice-over narration than the quick-cut sound-effects driven trailers dominating movie theaters today. These are the inevitable changes that occur when something is a guaranteed part of the theatrical experience for eons.

One change to the trailer landscape, though, is much more gut-wrenching. There used to be a greater sense of theatricality to announcing some of the biggest upcoming post-’80s blockbusters that’s been missing from the modern world of movie promotions, replaced, sadly, by a more liberal embrace of spoilers. Special shoot teasers – like the one Sony made for Spider-Man – are sadly gone, but boy are they needed now more than ever.

What Are Special Shoot Teasers?

The term “special shoot teaser” refers to a teaser trailer that doesn’t contain a scrap of footage from the final film. Instead, it’s comprised of newly-shot footage meant to give audiences a taste of what an upcoming movie will be like. Take the very first teaser for Jurassic Park, for instance, which focused on the uncovering of an ancient bug that sucked up dinosaur blood eons ago. Then there was the special shoot teaser for 1998’s Godzilla, which saw a tour guide’s flat explanation of a T-Rex as the “most powerful predator who ever walked the Earth” interrupted by Godzilla smashing his foot down on a T-Rex skeleton.

Unquestionably, though, the most famous of these teasers was the nearly two-minute-long Spider-Man teaser that showed this beloved web-crawler stopping bank robbers by snagging their escape helicopter in a web spun between the two Twin Towers. This special shoot teaser getting pulled after 9/11 undoubtedly inspired most of its notoriety. However, it was always a delightfully memorable teaser trailer that instantly showcased that a classical vision of Spider-Man in live-action was on the way. Who needed actual footage from the final film when you had this kind of stirring standalone special shoot teaser?

Unfortunately, by the late 2000s, the special shoot teaser trailers had basically vanished from modern movie promotion, save for the occasional exceptions like Ratatouille or Fred Claus. Part of that came down to those tragic circumstances informing Spider-Man’s teaser getting pulled from theaters. With the political landscape growing increasingly volatile in the 2000s, studios undoubtedly fretted over spending so much money on a special shoot teaser that would eventually need to get replaced. Meanwhile, other famous teaser trailers, like the ones for Iron Man, became the new kind of movie marketing to emulate.

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We Need Special Shoot Teasers Now More Than Ever

The demise of the special shoot teasers is also likely tied into increasing belt-tightening by major movie studios over the last 15 years. Studios like Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures produce fewer movies a year, while even Pixar has stopped putting original short films in front of its features. Anything deemed superfluous has been jettisoned and these special shoot teasers undoubtedly qualify. Why spend money on assembling a cast and crew for a teaser trailer when you can just use pre-existing footage from the actual movie?

The answer to that question, though, is showmanship. The special shoot teaser is needed now more than ever to help accentuate a sense of grandeur about the theatrical experience. So many movie trailers are just following a standard formula in terms of pacing and editing. Special shoot teasers, meanwhile, are imbued with exciting theatricality and especially radiate the distinctive personalities of the movies they’re promoting. They’re the kind of entities that can make people excited they came to a screening early enough to catch the trailers. Every inch of the theatrical experience should exude effort and thoughtfulness, including the trailers.

Plus, modern movie trailers could stand a jolt of excitement and energy, not to mention leaning less on spoilers to carry the day. Audiences are sick of trailers for movies like Us giving away big twists just to entice people to come to the theater. Special shoot teasers, which never feature footage from the final movie, solve that. You get a taste of what a big blockbuster like Spider-Man or T2: Judgement Day is like, but not the entire cinematic meal. There’s really no end to the joys that these extraordinary special shoot teasers provided. They could be big screen champions once again in the blockbuster movie landscape. Goodness knows the modern filmmaking landscape could use that special shoot teaser magic once again.