Wake Up by Arcade Fire

I love movie trailers.

I regularly check movie trailer websites, multiple times a day. I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted to them, but I just really get a kick out of them. At their best a movie trailer is piece of art all by itself. In the same way I remember hearing pieces of music for the first time, I remember watching certain movie trailers. I vividly remember watching the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and just being awestruck. The moment when Qui-Gon introduces Anakin to Obi-Wan and OMG, seriously that moment when Darth Maul opened up both sides of his lightsaber: awesome.



Honestly some movies aren’t very good but have trailers that rock. The trailer for Seven Years In Tibet is amazing. I’ve never watched this film, don’t really care to, but man what a trailer.



Some trailers capture everything that’s in the film. If you don’t have the time or patience to watch The Lord of the Rings, watch the super-trailer. Everything’s there in under seven minutes.



One thing that almost every good trailer that I’ve seen shares is great music. I’ve discovered many songs from film trailers. The first time I heard “Heart Of The Matter,” (which I’ve done a post about), was in the Sex And The City trailer.



I recently saw the new Harry Potter film, and it was preceded by a trailer for the film Where The Wild Things Are, based on the book. I was never a big fan of the book growing up but the combination of the music and the images was stunning.

"Where The Wild Things Are" Trailer

“Wake Up” by Arcade Fire is a beautiful mess of sonic energy. The chorus of the “ah” at the start of the song has a symphonic and epic energy. The sounds that are used, the rock band with strings is not a unique combination of the instruments but the arrangement of these ingredients has a fresh and unique sound. The primal drums and dirty vocals have a rawness that is both unusual and instantly relatable.

The title of the song “Wake Up” refers to a line in the first section in which the song calls for children to wake up and “hold your mistakes up, before they turn summer into dust.” The song also calls us to think about what it means to grow up and what we have to do make it through our lives: “We’re just a million little God’s ‘causing’ rain storm tuning every good thing to rust, I guess we’ll just have to adjust.”

“Wake Up” ends with a feeling of relief. “With my lighting bolts a glowing, I can see where I am going” expresses a sense of clarity. Lyrics don’t always have a literal meaning or even a symbolic meaning that can be explicated but they can still express a feeling and a meaning. There’s not a lot of words in “Wake Up” but the the context of the melodies adds power to each word that is sung.

Movie trailers don't guarantee anything about the film they advertise but at their best they condense the emotional core of the film down to a couple minutes. Is the expressive journey of Where The Wild Things Are going to be the same as "Wake Up"? I don't know, I hope it is and even if its not I'm sure that it's going to be an interesting journey.

If the film disappoints, I can live with that and I'll always be thankful to this film for introducing me to the world of Arcade Fire.