The Raid 2

There’s something oddly charming about small-scale, off-the-cuff vanity projects from major filmmakers. Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing didn’t radically reimagine the Bard’s original text, but the context of production lent the film an immediately likable vibe. As legend goes, Whedon was having some of his closest chums/collaborators over for cocktails at his Los Angeles mansion when they decided it would be boozy fun to rattle off a little Shakespeare. They had such a good time, Whedon figured it could be cool to shoot it all and keep costs low by staging it around his house. The resulting product is a breezy but minor project with a healthy sense of spontaneity that shows off the filmmaker’s resourcefulness with a budget of practically zero.

With all of his projects, J.J. Abrams has shown extraordinary good taste in casting and ‘Star Wars: Episode 7’ is no different. Forget about the old-timers returning to the saga and think about John Boyega, Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie and the other terrific thespians being given the biggest spotlight of their careers. Abrams, more than most working filmmakers, knows how to showcase an actor or actress in a way that makes us wonder why they weren’t movie stars before he cast them. Anyway, this is just a longwinded way of getting around to saying that Abrams’ impeccable taste is once again on display since a trio of actors from ‘The Raid’ and ‘The Raid 2’ are apparently in ‘The Force Awakens.’

Trailers are a huge part of the fabric of movies. They play before every film shown in theaters, and on every movie website around the world. They’re commercials, obviously, but they’re also more than that; miniature works of art that utilize the core elements of cinema—image, sound, music, action, editing—at their most pure and refined. And today at ScreenCrush we’re celebrating movie trailers by saluting the best sneak previews of 2014.