As cinematic universes and film franchises take over an increasing share of Hollywood’s yearly production, the very fabric of the films themselves becomes increasingly promotional, as filmmaking decisions are made not for aesthetic reasons but for commercial ones dictated by a brand’s corporate owners. By looking at trailers, Hollywood’s original persuasive device, as both paratexts of these franchise filmic texts and as texts in and of themselves, this paper finds parallels between the functions of trailers and feature films within their brands. Using Star Wars as the brand and The Force Awakens and its trailers as locations of this blurring between promotional paratext and filmic text, we can see how the commercial and affective intentions of both the trailer and the film are similar, and how both the trailer and the film use the same devices to persuade spectators to continue engaging with the brand. This paper also examines the endlessly-deferred nature of narratives in franchises that attract large and dedicated fan communities, using the rhetorical structure that Lisa Kernan identified within trailers to explain how deferred narratives and the use of enthymemes persuades fans to engage with subsequent branded products.
About the presenterIsaac Napell
Isaac is a writer based in New York City. A California native, he is a lifelong film and television buff who has reviewed and covered performances ranging from festival films to classical music concerts to intimate plays. He is a recent graduate of the Goldring Arts Journalism graduate program at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.