As Chris Rock put it, “yeah, man, New Jack City was a loooooong time ago”.

One wonders - exactly which type of audience were they after?

The trailer manages to swing both ways: it looks like a straight-to-video genre effort and a Serious Issues message picture.

Bizarre choice of music - the street corner beat followed by one of the faster cuts that dominate the soundtrack followed again by the corner beat - frames the action as if it were a videoclip, which might enforce the “let’s appeal to the MTV crowd” option. Also, Ice-T’s presence is prominently showcased - and rightly so, given that a) he does play a main character and b) he was shaping up to be a star rapper.

On the other hand, Wesley Snipes is the first face/name popping up (and will go on to swallow the whole film, giving it the coveted cool-by-association Tony Montana vibe), but the rest of the trailer presents him as just one element in an ensemble, gunning for the “what’s happening in our society at large” slant.

(And while we’re on the subject - it’s a bit hard to believe that Tracy Camilla Johns was a box office draw, five years after Nola Darling - but then again, neither was Judd Nelson.)

Still, the Van Peebles aesthetic is quite alive throughout the thing: camera angles askew and all that haven’t aged well, but they anchor the film to what would eventually become the main “urban” shooting trend. At least for a few years.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “am I my brother’s keeper lol”.

Uber-exploitative 1984 theatrical trailer for John Milius’ Red Dawn.

Arguably the most bizarre thing to ever come out of Milius as a filmmaker (and that’s taking into account his own pro-gun, pro-war, rightwing kamikaze ethos), the movie in itself is an epic blood-and-tears Brat Pack bromance that 25 years later still makes you go “… wait, it’s supposed to be a satire, right?”.

First 20” are a thing of beauty, though, with the stillness and quiet of Anytown U.S.A. coming together in a “before” shot.

The rest of the trailer makes it look like a Continental Death Wish sort of movie, going all out with the “bad guys on a rampage” angle and showing comparatively little of the good ol’ Wolverines fighting back: choice Milius moments are missing - one imagines the deer blood drinking scene (“kinda makes you feel different on the inside”) wouldn’t have flied with mainstream audiences, just like multiple main characters eventually dropping dead.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “Hollywood. In reality the Soviet Union would have raped them up the ass.”