For those occasions when the trailer becomes inspirational enough to sell you the film it's advertising, there's always some fantastic music composed for these things!
- Prelude
, by Pusher Music. Not only is it used in the trailer for the Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it just gives you that "Last Stand" kind of feeling in general. Love or hate TF3, that trailer music was just epic. - Not originally composed for the trailer, but the use of "Welcome Home" by Coheed and Cambria for the 9 Official Trailer is enough to give you goosebumps so hard it HURTS.
- On the subject of using the instrumentals of rock songs, the trailer for the remake of Clash of the Titans makes suitably epic use of the instrumental version of "The Bird and the Worm" by The Used. The trailer was much, much better than the actual movie.
- Quite a few things, such as Top Gear, enjoy using the awesome, climactic theme music from 28 Days Later, the song "In a Heartbeat" by John Murphy. As the name would suggest, the song has a tempo similar to a heart beating or a clock ticking ominously down.
- Two Steps From Hell is an odd little outfit that specializes in composing music for movie trailers. Absolutely spectacular music for movie trailers, which frequently is magnitudes better than the film's final score. They've supplied music for plenty of movie, TV and video game trailers including Harry Potter, Inception, Avatar, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, WALL•E, Hugo, Thor, Star Trek (2009), X-Men, Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Game of Thrones. They also have a reputation as some of the best songs to work out to.
- Two Steps from Hell have released one album, Invincible, to the public, and are planning on two more releases. Invincible is available on iTunes and Amazon mp3. And here's the title song.
- Highlights from their Nemesis album include "Tristan," "Clash of Empires," "Atlantis," "Moving Mountains," and the haunting "Enigmatic Soul" and "Hunter's Moon".
- "Dragon Rider" is nice and up-tempo, "Flameheart" is like a One-Winged Angel moment for the good guys, "Starvation" is...just listen.
- Gems from their Legend album include "Heart of Courage" (used in the 2012 Olympics, no less), "Hypnotica", and "Smell of Victory."
- The "Freedom Fighters" track from the 2009 film Star Trek (2009)'s movie trailer is Made of Win. And if it counts, the dialogue selections for the trailer just add to its kickass: "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives. Including yours. I dare you to do better. Enlist. In Starfleet."
- "Down With The Enterprise" is a close second.
- "Protectors of the Earth" is quite possibly the most unspeakably epic piece of music ever created. It's been extremely popular, used in promotion for Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Inkheart, Mass Effect 3 and the Olympics.
- The "Freedom Fighters
- "Merchant Prince" is a sign of things to come from the Nemesis II album, which can't get here soon enough.
- Let's just say that their music is the only good thing about the trailers for the Twilight movies.
- "Black Blade", "Ocean Princess'' and "Master of Shadows".
- "He Who Brings the Night", "Free Fall", and possibly the greatest song they have ever composed: "To Glory!"
- "He Who Brings the Night
- Glory & Honor.
- Legions of Faith.
- The Vendetta Conspiracy.
- One of the best would have to be Magika. The strings and the vocals are just awesome!
- Chopperhead. Two minutes and five seconds of thundering drums, raging electric guitars, and screaming choir.
- ASAP. This song was used in the trailer for Series 1 of Sherlock.
- In addition to their epic repertoire, Two Steps from Hell has quite a few songs that lean towards the swoonily romantic; see Undying Love, Frozen Moment, Love & Loss (featured in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Trailer, and in The Walking Dead as well), and Goodbye for Now.
- United We Stand, Divided We Fall.
- The Last Stand.
- Jump!, a beautiful 4 minute rock fest which could be used in parkour chase scenes.
- False King.
- The trailer for Aquaman includes a song from the Battlecry album, "None Shall Live". This song also has a vocal version, "Children of the Sun", which amplifies the awesomeness of this song.
- Two Steps from Hell have released one album, Invincible, to the public, and are planning on two more releases. Invincible is available on iTunes and Amazon mp3. And here's the title song.
- X-Ray Dog:
- Their most famous piece, Gothic Power is good, but it's their less well known pieces that tend to be the most amazing. Listing all the examples from 48 albums and counting of epic would be impossible. However, to make a start, Freeflight is one minute and ten seconds of pure joy.
- Or perhaps something like Titans, the music used in the Ultramarines trailer.
- X-Ray Dog's work on the PoTC: At World's End trailer is one the best examples of trailer music blending in perfectly with the images and sound effects. Check out the 1:55 mark, where the sword fighting matches up perfectly with the music.
- Also worth noting is the instrumental version of "Dethroned", which you may remember from the King Kong (2005) trailer.
- Act of Courage is beautiful as well.
- Their most famous piece, Gothic Power
- Immediate Music - for starters, Lacrimosa.
- Another awesome piece from Immediate Music is Proud Nation.
- Arcana by Immediate Music. 3 minutes and 8 seconds of eargasmic choir and orchestra.
- Requiem Rave by Immediate Music. Ethereal chanting coupled with fast paced electronic beats? Yes.
- Immediate Music has two subset groups, Globus and Immediate. They have released albums to the public. They mostly consist of remixes of songs by Immediate Music...that completely kick the ass of the originals. Examples including Preliator and An Epic Age. Immediate also has a 2nd album, but its songs are not on Youtube yet.
- Crusade. Sublime. There is a better-known choral version too.
- Sanctus Immortale. Whatever this theme is playing over can't be good...except for the listener. There also exists a vocal version.
- Another awesome piece from Immediate Music is Proud Nation
- Master of Shadows, the 2012 trailer music.
- The absolutely gorgeous "Mind Heist" from the Inception trailer made quite an impact on the number of people who saw the film, if youtube comments are anything to judge by. "BRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMM" indeed.
- This one too.
- "Mind Heist" is one of the best themes for trailers, making ANY movie seem epic.
- This
- ''The Social Network's trailer has Scala'snote version of Radiohead's "Creep,".
- While The Last Airbender may have been...painful, the trailer music was awesome. Particularly "Lonely Dusk" (the pure music clip hits the epic part at about 1:50).
- The alien invasion film Battle: Los Angeles, has some strangely enthralling music for the trailer.
- Absolute Anthropoid by Pfeifer Broz Music used in the Deathly Hallows trailer. And the accelerated version. Both of them are very short and unspeakably epic.
- The trailer for David Fincher's version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) features an abridged cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and manages to be unbelievably awesome in just a minute and a half.
- The use of "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" by The Smashing Pumpkins in the Watchmen promo. What a perfect way to recycle a song from the great soundtrack of a horrible Batman movie.
- More contemporary orchestral pieces that have been used in trailers to emphasize how awesome the film is.
- Richard Harvey's "Reach for the Stars".
- Joel McNeely's "Iron Will suite". You will know when the awesomeness appears when the track "The Race Begins" appears.
- Richard Harvey's "Reach for the Stars"
- World Collapsing from the Snow White & the Huntsman trailer. Epicness ensues.
- Judge and Jury by Audiomachine for the Prometheus trailer is epic, as well as scary. It helps that for the trailers they added the siren from Alien.
- Something to Fight For by Sencit Music from the Iron Man 3 trailer. Just...listen to it.
- Dawn of the Titans from the Lincoln trailer. Gotta love that choir.
- Scala's version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters", which is attached to the trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, gives the trailer, and by extension the story, a haunting feeling.
- Snow Patrol's "What If The Storm Ends" in the trailer for Epic (2013).
- Star Trek Into Darkness had an incredible theme called Icarus written by Superhuman for one of its trailers.
- For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, an instrumental of Les Friction's "Louder Than Words" was used, particularly the part starting at 3:44. The song was also used in Oz the Great and Powerful trailers.
- Theatrical Trailer 2 for The Hunger Games Catching Fire. Starts off with a lead-in of just soft piano and string instruments that give a feeling of "hope" which is one of the movie's main themes. Then slowly explodes into a quickening pace of instruments all colliding together, probably one of the most breath-taking trailers from the past decade.
- Audiomachine
- "New Beginning" from the Noah trailer.
- "The Origin of Species (Magnus)" from the Rogue One trailer, also becomes a Bootstrapped Leitmotif for Director Krennic due to its prominent uses for his entrance in Rogue One Panel and MOKO Rogue One Expo.
- "New Beginning"
- Really Slow Motion's Gender fits right in with the tone of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as does Ninja Tracks' "Pretender".
- The trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey makes good use of a new goth-style and positively eerie redux of Beyoncé's haunting "Crazy in Love".
- The trailers for Avengers: Age of Ultron include an awesome cover of "No Strings On Me" that manages to make the song sound terrifying. There's also Wreckage, the music for the rest of the trailer, which captured the darker, more intense mood nicely.
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns' trailer is bolstered and complemented by "Rise of the Avenger" by Brand X Music from the trailer to Part One.
- The Sin City trailer had "Cells" by The Servant. It's so closely connected to the movie that it's often referred to as "The Sin City Theme".
- Audio Network's "Rising Mercury", a song so ridiculously tense and awesome it's been used in trailers for MANY films, and so fucking epic even Iron Maiden used it as their 2012-2014 tour intro, set to clips of icebergs falling. It's so epic that here are even reports of fans reciting the chant at concerts.
- Trailers for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation gave us a menacing version of "Ready or Not" by the defunct hip-hop group The Fugees and Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love".
- Deadpool (2016) had DMX's "X Gon Give It To Ya" as its trailer theme. In the movie itself, it plays right before the Final Battle as Deadpool, Colossus, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead do their Team Power Walk.
- Captain America: Civil War: The trailer's music, "Sharks Don't Sleep" by Dean Valentine, really brought the bleakness on what's going to happen in the film.
- The trailer for the Netflix movie Mute has “Pilgrimage” by Twelve Titans Music, which matches the Cyberpunk feel so well that it might actually be more enjoyable than the movie itself.
- The trailer for Logan has “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, the perfect combination of a Tear Jerker song with a Tear Jerker movie.
- Zack Hemsey's "Vengeance" is a perfect song for movies like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Hunter Killer.
- The trailers for Mission: Impossible – Fallout are set to "Friction" by Imagine Dragons and "Run for Your Life" by the Seige, the former of which uses Mickey Mousing to the tune of the Mission: Impossible theme.
