The team here at Empire HQ spends a lot of time watching movies. On streaming, at the cinema, on disc, on the little screen on the back of a plane seat — we can't get enough of them. And because we love movies, and watch so many of them, we also love movie trailers. That heart stopping first glimpse at our next cinematic adventure; that perfectly chosen, tone-setting needle drop; that perfectly balanced edit that teases a banger without revealing all of its secrets. The art of the movie trailer is one that's easy to get wrong, and incredibly difficult to get right. And so, as has become an annual tradition, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on the trailers that entertained and enticed us in 2024, stoking conversation and adding to our ever-growing watchlists. Read on for Empire's list of the very best movie trailers we've seen over the past twelve months...
23 Movie Trailers We Couldn't Stop Watching In 2024
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if your trailer features the hero saying, “I need you to trust me… one last time,” then you’ve got a certified banger on your hands. And when Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt says it in the astonishing first teaser for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the chills we got were all too real. But then again, this whole two-minute first look at the IMF’s next (final?) adventure is virtually a blockbuster in microcosm, complete with thumping orchestral accompaniment, lots of running, that long talked about biplane chase, submarining shenanigans, and callbacks to every single film in the M:I franchise to date. And that shot of a de-aged (?) Cruise grabbing the Rabbit’s Foot from Mission: Impossible 3? Hoo boy… we trust you Tom. We. Trust. You.
Thunderbolts*
If you want to know why ‘Where Is My Mind?’ is on every member of Empire’s Spotify Wrapped this year, then ask whoever was in charge of this first “teaser” for upcoming MCU team-up joint The Dark Ave— *ahem*, Thunderbolts*. This one may stretch the definition of a teaser, clocking in at a whopping three-and-a-half minutes long, but if the goal was to sell us on Jake Schreier’s take on Marvel’s equivalent of The Suicide Squad, then consider us sold. Placing Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and David Harbour’s Red Guardian front and centre before stacking the Thunderbolts’ ragtag deck with Wyatt Russell’s super-soldier John Walker, Black Widow baddie Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Hannah John-Kamen’s Ant-Man And The Wasp antagonist Ghost, and Lewis Pullman’s newcomer ‘Bob’ (aka Sentry), this trailer does a great job setting the tone for a more grounded Marvel movie while teeing up a slew of questions to keep us theorising til May comes around. It also gives us Bucky Barnes washing his metal arm in a dishwasher — so there’s that, too.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Forget Thanos. Forget The Joker. Forget Darth Vader. We all know the most despicable supervillain in cinema history is Feathers McGraw, the beady-eyed felonious fake fowl who was last seen (rightfully) rotting in jail at the end of Aardman Animations' BAFTA and Academy Award winning 1993 short The Wrong Trousers. Such is the power of the pilfering penguin that all it took was the appearance of a familiar red rubber glove, a few webbed steps into the light, and a nefarious crack of the neck from the bad bird in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’s first teaser to strike fear into all of our hearts. Feathers is back — and nobody is safe!
Better Man
On paper, Robbie Williams biopic Better Man sounds like a standard issue soup-to-nuts, rags-to-riches film charting how a troublemaker from Stoke-on-Trent helped form the biggest boyband of the '90s and went on to become a global pop megastar. But then you watch the trailer, and you see that Robbie Williams is played by a CGI ape (aka performance capture artist and actor Jonno Davies), and you see said CGI ape at Knebworth bellowing, “For the next two hours, your ass is mine!”, and you realise that The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey’s latest effort is anything but standard. And as our review attests, this teaser sets up one of the low-key most original and exciting films of 2024. Consider us entertained, Mr Williams!
Juror #2
Clint Eastwood may be 94 years of age, but our first look at his newest film, courtroom drama Juror #2, instantly assured us the Unforgiven filmmaker and screen legend has still got it. A Matryoshkan marvel, the trailer for Eastwood’s possibly final feature loops perfectly around the dilemma facing Nicholas Hoult’s Justin Kemp, a father-to-be whose past comes back to haunt him when he’s called up for jury duty only to realise he may have a closer tie to the case being tried than anyone realises. Careful with its exposition, laser-focused on teeing up the morality play that’s about to unfold without spoiling any of its developments, and edited with surgical precision, the verdict’s in — this one’s a banger.
Sasquatch Sunset
If you thought that Better Man trailer was the most bizarre, bestial teaser we got in 2024, then we are afraid you’re sorely mistaken. That particular furry crown goes to the first look we had at the Zellners’ Sasquatch Sunset. On the one hand, it’s a wordless, serene, jangly-folk-music-backed wonder to behold, a trailer that speaks to the odd poignance and poetry of the Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg starring film. On the other, it introduces us to a family of shagging sasquatches (not a single hair of whom is CGI) who hunt, sniff skunks, and pick fleas off one another's backs when they’re not shitting in the woods or playing stick drums. It’s demented genius — which sums the actual film up pretty well, too.
A Quiet Place: Day One
The trailer for Michael Sarnoski’s alien invasion origin story A Quiet Place: Day One looks pretty good — but, funnily enough, it’s the way that it sounds that really makes it stand out from the crowd. Rolling back the clocks from the events of John Krasinski’s original A Quiet Place duology to the day the series’ phonophobic extraterrestrials first hit the Big Apple, this teaser focuses on the cacophonous noise of NYC, locating within that maelstrom Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric. Then, when the ETs arrive and things take a turn for the decidedly more disaster movie, wailing alarms and gasps of breath are mixed to potent effect as the chaos and catastrophic reality of trying to keep quiet in the noise epicentre of America becomes apparent. Whoever cut this one understood the assignment and then some.
Longlegs
Too often these days, film trailers tend to give the whole game away. But Osgood Perkins — son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins and director of underrated chiller Gretel & Hansel — clearly never got that particular memo. His latest, Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe-starring occult serial killer chiller Longlegs, enjoyed an unnerving slew of cryptic teasers and promo posters in the long run-up to its release, and even the full two-minute trailer managed to scare us shitless while telling us virtually nothing. Honestly, everyone in the Neon marketing department deserves a raise for their Longlegs campaign — and for keeping Nic Cage’s creepy occult killer so well hidden for so long.
Deadpool & Wolverine
“That’s what I’m talking about. Big slow-mo action scene… who knows if you live or die… let’s fucking go!” We couldn’t have put it any better ourselves, Wade. After reaching a fever pitch with our hype for Deadpool & Wolverine, it was a blessed relief to see Marvel Jesus and Wolvie’s arrival in the MCU given the trailer it truly deserved. Set to an ethereal mix of Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’, it gave us Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman suiting up and trading blows, a cameo-teasing Fox sign buried under rubble, an unsurprising amount of the ol’ ultraviolence, and a surprising amount of poignance. LFG, indeed!
Hard Truths
A supermarket bust-up, an ostrich-based insult, and an admonishment of "cheerful, grinning people" all within the trailer's first 30 seconds? Yeah, the Hard Truths trailer left us in no doubt that Secrets & Lies duo Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Mike Leigh are well and truly back. But while the frothing rage of Jean-Baptiste’s crotchety Pansy is quite the sight to behold (her diatribe against baby pockets is a real doozy), it’s the late Dick Pope’s graceful camerawork and Leigh’s humanist directorial lens that really shines through here, promising there’s more to Hard Truths and its characters than meets the eye.
Sinners
The first look at Creed and Black Panther collaborators Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s latest team-up, Sinners, nailed the brief. Doing precisely what any teaser worth its salt (circle) should, this one showed us just enough to have us hooked, without really giving anything away. What it did give away, however, is the fact that Coogler and Jordan’s horror movie looks the business (thanks in no small part to Coogler re-teaming with his Black Panther composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, and costume designer Ruth E. Carter); that the film will see Jordan multirole as two different characters; and that it’s set in early 20th century America, where a small town finds itself fighting back against an evil force that we heavily suspect could be vampires. Vampire or no vampire though, it looks like Sinners will have a lot of bite.
Cuckoo
Surprise, surprise — it’s those mad trailer wizards over at Neon again! And the trailer for Tilman Singer’s Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens starring Cuckoo is every bit as freaky — and freakin’ cool — as Longlegs’. From Stevens' Mr. König menacingly playing woodwind, to an investigator looking into a mysterious, not-entirely-human-looking woman, and an increasingly bloodied and broken Gretchen (Schafer) screaming, shouting, and getting their final girl on amidst the eerily tranquil climes of the German Alps, Cuckoo’s teaser assured us that its name isn’t just the title of the film — it’s an accurate description of its contents too. The end product may have been a little less potent, but the trailer more than did its job and remains a zinger.
Alien: Romulus
As a nefarious android science officer once sort-of said, “The perfect trailer. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.” The second proper look at Fede Alvarez’ Alien: Romulus does a perfect job of setting up the movie’s Alien_-_meets-Aliens ambitions, leaning heavy into the sci-fi Gothic throughout its first minute as Cailee Spaeny and her spelunking crew navigate the Remus module of the Renaissance, before taking an elevator down to hell — aka the Romulus module — in its action-heavy back half. Rib-cracking chestbursters, phallic facehuggers, and a full-sized, acid-dripping xenomorph all come out to play as Alvarez reminds us that his Alien movie is coming from the guy who gave us Evil Dead. In space they may not be able to hear you scream, but you could definitely hear us scream in the Empire office when this first dropped.
The Substance
We’ve actually seen Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, and even so we’d struggle to describe the movie and everything it’s going for. But in less than a minute, the teaser for the Revenge filmmaker’s arthouse body-horror set the vibe of the piece immaculately. Thudding bass, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley mirroring one another, the lycra and the LA strip, Dennis Quaid being all sorts of leering and lecherous, and then that rapidly cut, table smashing, bloodspattered climax… it’s intoxicating, repellent, poised on a knife’s edge between comedy and utter horror. It is, in short, The Substance.
Piece By Piece
Robbie Williams isn’t the only musician to have gotten an unorthodox movie made about them this year. Before Better Man drove us all bananas, there was Piece By Piece, Morgan Neville’s LEGO brick-based Pharrell Williams doc. If it sounded a bit outré on paper though, then the trailer perfectly illustrated why the LEGO treatment is a perfect fit for an artist who’s spent his whole career deconstructing, reconfiguring, and creating fresh beats by thinking outside the box. From the ‘Happy’ music video recreation, to the studdy synaesthetic flourishes, to the sight of LEGO Snoop Dogg turning into an actual Snoop Dog, in just a couple of minutes we got the blueprint for something so bonkers it bends all the way round to sheer brilliance.
We Live In Time
What do you get when you take the director of Brooklyn and pair him up with arguably two of the most beloved and in-demand British actors working today? The answer is We Live In Time, John Crowley’s upcoming Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh starring romance. And if the trailer’s anything to go by, then you’ll want to bring tissues for this one — it’s gonna be emotional. Teasing a non-linear, decade-spanning romance between Garfield’s Weetabix salesman Tobias and Pugh’s figure skater-turned-chef Almut, brought together when the former is hit by the latter’s car, our first look at the film has it all: Joy; sorrow; the highs of imminent parenthood and the horrors of a serious diagnosis; shared Jaffa Cakes in the bath; and some terrible parallel parking. Prepare to be utterly charmed and then thoroughly destroyed when 1 January rolls around.
Nosferatu
He’s already chilled us to the bone with satanic goats (The Witch), accursed lighthouses (The Lighthouse), and bloodsoaked tales of viking vengeance (The Northman), but with his upcoming Nosferatu, it feels quite likely that Robert Eggers is about to make his past works look comparatively whimsical. All looming shadows, scurrying rats, psychosexual infatuation, and sacrilegious imagery, ensconced in an astonishing recreation of early 19th century England and Romania, the trailer for Eggers’ latest is a masterclass in tension and a throwback to the horror masters of yore. With nary a jumpscare nor whip pan in sight, we instead are invited to join Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and the rest of Eggers’ impressive cast on a journey into the very heart of darkness — of fear itself. And when it all looks this good? Well, it’s worth risking our necks for, we say.
Trap
You know how we usually complain about trailers that seemingly give away the whole plot of a film? Well, the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Hitchcockian thriller Trap is absolutely the exception. The premise of the movie is that the police have staged a pop concert as cover for an operation to catch prolific serial killer ‘The Butcher’, and right from the jump it is made very clear that said Butcher is suburban dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who’s at the gig with his music mad daughter. So before you even go see the film, you know that this is no rote did-he-dunit. Rather, this is all about the thrill of the chase, the game of cat-and-mouse played out to the ebb and flow of an Eras Tour style concert — and it’s genius. The inclusion of Oversharing Merch Man — aka Jamie — is just the icing on the Shyamalan cake. Delicious!
Wolf Man
Having already successfully reimagined The Invisible Man as a parable on gaslighting starring Elizabeth Moss, we were already well in the tank for Leigh Whannell’s second contemporary Universal Monster movie, Wolf Man, long before we even saw a shot of the film. But then, after a couple of short teasers, a full trailer dropped for the Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner starrer, showing us exactly why the filmmaker has been calling his newest nightmare a return to “straight-up, pure horror.” Having already established this take on the legendary lycanthrope will be a meditation on the dissolution of the family unit and “the tragedy of the human body falling apart,” this trailer goes hard, offering bloodshed, breaking bones, distended limbs, and a slew of stylish, staccato camera movements as Abbott's beast within is unleashed. And the actual transformation? Gnarly…
The Brutalist
Trying to market a three-and-a-half hour, period-set state of the nation epic is, we imagine, not the easiest gig going. And yet, the teaser for Vox Lux director Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist somehow manages to sell the movie in just a single minute. Over imposing shots of Adrien Brody’s Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth — at work, at home, amid grand structures and in painstaking close-up as he leaves the Holocaust behind to pursue the American Dream — we are given perhaps one of the biggest flexes in modern movie trailers. The word “Monumental” slowly crawls across the screen, attributed not just to one critic or outlet, but to four — The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Time Out, and The Hollywood Reporter. Now, obviously, if it had said Empire too it’d be even more impressive, but until we’ve watched the movie it’s more than enough to have us ready to join Brody for the long haul.
Mickey 17
Based on Edward Ashton's novel Mickey7, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 sees Robert Pattinson star (and star, and star…) as eponymous Expendable (not that kind) Mickey Barnes, an unlikely hero on a dangerous mission to help colonise the icy world of Niflheim. Thing is, whenever our man Mickey dies — and die he most assuredly does— his body is reprinted and brought back, memories intact. It’s a nutty premise for a movie, even before you consider how R-Pattz modelled his voice on Ren & Stimpy — and it’s one done great justice by its wackadoodle trailer. Set to ‘Ain’t That A Kick In The Head’, the teaser for the long-awaited movie sets up the premises, teases wild shenanigans galore, and shows off Pattinson’s zany performance all while preserving the movie’s air of mystery.
Marching Powder
If the prospect of Danny Dyer reteaming with his Football Factory director Nick Love on a sweary, lairy, hard 18 rated joint gets your melon going, then boy do we have the trailer for you. Introduced by Dyer himself in full cockney geezer mode, the ad for The Marching Powder introduces us to Jack Jones (Dyer), a coke-addled football hooligan given six weeks to turn his life around. Cue two minutes of Dyer attempting to get his missus, his mates, and his in-laws back on side as the discovery of a pink pouch of ‘Marching Powder’ looks to sabotage our man Jack Jones’ detox. We’re simple people, and a ripped-to-the-tits Dyer doing his wired, hooliganistic, sailor-shamingly sweary schtick in a Football Factory universe film is something we absolutely need. Inject it into our eyeballs.
Queer
Set to Sinéad O'Connor's iconic cover of Nirvana's 'All Apologies', the first trailer for Luca Guadagnino's latest perfectly sets the tone for what we can expect from Queer. The feted filmmaker's take on William S. Burroughs' semi-autobiographical book looks ripe to deliver a cinematic experience that's in turns louche and tender, tinged with wistfulness and laced with something a little more Ayahuascan, as Daniel Craig's American ex-pat William Lee gets high (in more ways than one) on young would-be suitor Eugene's (Drew Starkey) supply, wandering the lugubriously neon-lit streets of mid-century Mexico City with an insouciance befitting the man who once was Bond. Creating an indelible impression rather than doling out a dump of exposition, this teaser offers an intoxicating glimpse into an intoxicating film.