“I’m going to
make him an offer he can’t refuse.” If you recognize this quote, you are
probably familiar with Mario Puzo’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy. These films have
been considered some of the best crime films ever made, and even though they
were all released before I was even born, I have watched all of them more times
than any other movies. The Godfather Part
III was released in 1990, 16 years after Part II; however, it still managed
to be nominated for seven Oscar awards and seven Golden Globe awards as well.
The Godfather Part III ‘s trailer
attempts to convince people to watch this movie by utilizing ethos, pathos and
logos. The trailer begins by showing the scene where Michael Corleone (Al
Pacino) becomes the Godfather, while playing The Godfather’s theme song; “Speak Softly Love.” Showing that
specific scene from The Godfather Part II
is an apparent use of ethos, since it explicates to the audience that this
film will be the continuation to the previous reputable Godfather films, giving
it automatic credibility. It also makes fans of the previous films excited to
see what will happen next, especially since the continuation was released 16
years after the previous film, which shows the use of ethos and pathos. The use
of the theme song as the opening of the trailer creates emotion, showing the
use of pathos. Personally, I am a huge fan of The Godfather Trilogy, so when I hear its theme song, I immediately
get excited and it reminds me of these films, since it is used in all three of
them.
The trailer then
proceeds to showing the use of logos and ethos by stating that the first two
films have been nominated for 21 awards. Consequently, this gives the third
film a sense of authority and logic, since its preceding films were so successful,
almost as if this granted the audience a “guarantee” that the third film will
be just as good, if not better. Other uses of logos in the trailer were the
scenes of violence and sex. These scenes not only let the audience know that
this film is directed to an older crowd, and is most likely rated R, but they
also let them know that the genre of the film will be drama/action.
Once the trailer
stops showing scenes from the previous two films, it begins to introduce the
actors. The first actor’s name shown on the screen was Al Pacino. This is an
effective use of ethos, since he not only plays the main character, but he is
also the most famous actor in the entire film. The opening scene from Part III
in the trailer shows Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) as an old man, trying to rid
himself of his illegitimate business, and trying to partner with the pope. This
immediately causes the audience to want to know more, since he is apparently
giving up the illegal businesses, which the previous films were all about. A
new character is also introduced. He is Michael’s nephew, who is shown to be
very violent and aggressive, although extremely loyal to Michael. This gives
the sense of foreshadowing to the audience making them doubt if he will take
over the family business.
After reading “Casting”
from Understanding Movies, I learned
that a movies success relies vastly on the casting process. For this film, the
director Francis Ford Coppola, decided to keep actors from the previous films,
especially the main characters, while also introducing a new actress; his
daughter. This was very controversial, since her daughter later on won “The
Worst New Actress Award” after the film was released. In “Casting” the author
states; “Casting a movie is almost an art in itself. It requires an acute
sensitivity to a player’s type, a convention inherited from the live theater. “
(Giannetti, 279) After taking the quote from “Casting” into consideration, I
found it almost unbelievable that the director decided to take the risk of
giving his daughter one of the leading roles in the film, considering she was
not a famous actress, and had no real experience in acting.
Although I am a
huge fan of The Godfather films, I have to admit that the
trailer for this movie is extremely old, making it hard for people who are not
fans of these movies to be very interested in watching the film. If this
trailer were compared with trailers from today, I would say it is not a very
good one. The trailer is directed to fans from the previous films, but not so
much to a new audience.
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