Movie Taglines: How They Work Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kill Bill Volume 1

The definition of a movie tagline is a catchy phrase that communicates the theme or essence of a movie. It must be short and catchy. It acts as a memorable slogan and figures prominently on movie promotional material such as posters and trailers.

A tagline's aim must pique curiosity, and create a long-lasting impression to turn potential viewers into an audience. Taglines are, by necessity, power-packed marketing devices.

Movie marketing using taglines is as old as cinema itself. At first, taglines were brief descriptive lines, capturing a glimpse of the story. Over time they became more creative, with liberal use of literary devices such as puns, alliteration, or even the asking of rhetorical questions. They transcended mere description and transformed into essential marketing tools. No movie was complete without a tagline, ready to promote it.

Contemporaneously, taglines capture the essence of a movie in no more than a few words. By definition, they are attention-grabbing hooks that entice people to become an audience if effective. Over the years tagline creation has become an art in its own right.

Consider this. "Kill Bill Volume 1" was a Quentin Tarantino movie where The Bride (Uma Thurman) sought revenge because the father of her baby, Bill and her former colleagues of an assassination squad, killed everyone at her wedding rehearsal. The Bride, though, survived and woke up from a coma four years later, horrified to find her unborn child was killed as well. Because you know this is a Tarantino film, you know there will be plenty of high-level violence. Therefore the tagline was brilliant: "Here comes the bride." It conjured up happy images of a wedding day, quite the opposite of what the movie was about. Irony is so powerful in movie taglines. However, it also has a double meaning. "Here comes the bride" hints at the movie plot - The bride will seek revenge on everyone who wronged her. Indeed that was the very essence of the plot. A brilliant tagline for a typically brilliant and violent film by Tarantino.

Answer: Bonnie and Clyde

The Classics.

The tagline for the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde" was "They're young, they're in love, and they kill people," which said it all. On one hand, you had a romance (heightened by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway playing the leads) but they were violent thieves as well so murder features heavily in the story. The tagline's sudden left turn, when it announced "kill people" provided contrast to the first half of the tagline, but in nine words the plot was summarised in such a brilliant way. The movie followed a simplified version of the real Bonnie and Clyde as they committed robberies and heists as they travelled from Missouri to Texas.

Other classic movies with great taglines:

"12 Angry Men" (1957) - "Life is in their hands. Death is on their minds."

"Double Indemnity" (1944) - "From the moment they met, it was murder."

"Easy Rider" (1967) - "A man went looking for America, and he couldn't find it anywhere."

"The Lady Eve" (1941) - "When you deal a fast shuffle, love is in the cards."

"Taxi Driver" (1976) -"On every street in every city in this country, there is a nobody who dreams of being a somebody."

Answer: The Bodyguard

The Romances

"The Bodyguard" was a 1992 romantic film starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. The tagline, "Never let her out of your sight. Never let your guard down. Never fall in love," perfectly captures the essence of the movie (and summarises the plot), which follows the story of a former Secret Service agent who is hired to protect a famous singer. (On a side note, the film was originally intended to star Diana Ross and Steve McQueen in the lead roles, but the project was shelved after McQueen died in 1980. It wasn't until the late 1980s that the script was revived with Houston and Costner as the stars.)

"The Bodyguard" was a massive commercial success, grossing over $400 million worldwide, and its soundtrack, which features Houston's iconic rendition of "I Will Always Love You" remains one of the best-selling albums of all time over 30 years after it was first released.

Other romance movies with great taglines:

"When Harry Met Sally..." (1989) - "Can two friends sleep together and still love each other in the morning?"

"Notting Hill (1999) - "Can the most famous film star in the world fall for just an ordinary guy?"

"Moonstruck" - "Blame it on the moon."

Answer: Ghostbusters

The Comedies

"Ghostbusters" (1984) was an American comedy film written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. (Aykroyd wrote the original for John Belushi and himself but when Belushi died in 1982, Ramis was brought in for a re-write.) It starred Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as three parapsychologists who started a ghost-catching business in New York City.

The tagline: "Who you gonna call?" - was very very clever. A theme song with the same name was released simultaneously which featured the line "Who you gonna call? - Ghostbusters" several times throughout the song. The same line was also featured in the movie itself. Not only was the Ray Parker Jr, song a hit, but the phrase entered the popular lexicon and helped, in no small way, make the movie a critical and financial success (box office $282m vs. a budget of $30m).

Great taglines from other successful comedy movies:

"A Fish Called Wanda" (1998) - "A tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood."

"Chicken Run" (2000) - "Escape or die frying."

"Mars Attacks!" (1996) - "Nice Planet. We'll take it."

"The Naked Gun" (1988) - "If you only see one movie this year... you need to get out more often."

(A note on this latter tagline - This tagline embraced the comedic tone of the movie It mocked the cliche and hype around a single must-see movie, with a funny twist. It even parodied the concept of taglines within its own tagline. It sent a message to an impending audience that "Naked Gun" was a movie that didn't take itself seriously at all, and invited paying customers to embrace the absurdity it contained.)

Answer: The Dark Knight

"The Dark Knight" (2008) was another Batman movie, written and directed by Christopher Nolan. This tagline should not be on any Great Taglines lists as it said almost nothing about the movie, and it would have enticed no one into a cinema. However, it has stayed with us all, perhaps because it was a classic line delivered by Heath Ledger's Joker. (Ledger won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal.) The movie was, arguably, the best one of its genre, certainly the best of the franchise, and the tagline hints that we should not embrace the darkness the movie portrayed. A brilliant tagline for all the wrong reasons! (The original tagline was "Welcome to a world without rules," but it appeared to have been dropped sometime after release in favour of the above tagline.)

Superhero movies with great taglines:

"Superman" (1978) - "You'll believe a man can fly."

"Spider-Man" (1977) - "With great power comes great responsibility."

Answer: Jaws

Horror movies

"Jaws" (1974) was the first summer blockbuster released in the US. It told the story of a great white shark taking beach-goers from the tourist town. The police chief (Roy Schneider) wanted the beaches closed until Quint's (Robert Shaw's) grizzly fisherman caught the shark, but the mayor wanted the beaches kept open to keep the tourist dollars flowing into the town. Spielberg's brilliant movie (which had significant changes to the book) actually stopped some moviegoers from subsequently swimming on American beaches. The tagline, "You'll never go in the water again," was taken quite literally. Just as it scared people in the movie theatre, the media was filled with reports of people who now feared swimming at any beach. (Note: The fourth "Jaws" movie "Jaws: The Revenge" (1987) was a poor movie and a financial flop. Its tagline, "This time it's personal," was as poor as the movie itself. No pun, no twist, no plot summary, no effort. Arguably one of the worst taglines in movie history.)

A worthy contender for best horror film tagline:

"A Nightmare on Elm Street: (1984) - "If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all..."

Answer: Erin Brockovich

Drama movies

"Erin Brockovich" (2000) was based on a true story about an eponymous paralegal (played with aplomb by Julia Roberts who won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance) that made a large corporation admit they irreversibly damaged a mining town and the health of its people. The tagline is both simple and inspirational. No puns, no twists, just a clever plot summary in 14 words. It sent millions to the cinema.

Almost as good:

"Ordinary People" (1980) - "Everything is in its proper place except the past." - A slow burner of a movie directed by Robert Redford with an extraordinary performance by Mary Tyler Moore about an affluent family with a tragic past that causes them to unravel.

And the bronze goes to:

"The Social Network" (2010) - "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."

Answer: Apollo 13

Action movies

"Apollo 13" (1995) was the true story of how a crippled spaceship managed to get back to Earth safely. The tagline was as clever as it was simple. It announced the exact time when a successful mission to that point became just the opposite. The line was stated in real-life by the actual astronaut John "Jack" Swigert aboard the spacecraft. It was repeated in the movie by Tom Hanks who played Jim Lovell. It was the pivotal point in the movie. As an audience, you were immediately immersed in the high tension of the situation (even though you knew from real events how it ended). The tagline has become part of the English lexicon and is used in derivative situations when the ordinary person realises they have a problem. A brilliant movie with a perfect tagline.

Worthy Contenders:

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) - "We are not alone."

"Monsters Inc." (2001) - "We scare because we care."

"Dirty Harry" (1971) - "You don't assign him to murder cases. You just turn him loose."

"Rocky" (1976) - "His whole life was a million to one shot."

Answer: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Movie sequels.

Sequels, cynically speaking are movies devised to cash in on the success of the original. The popular exceptions to this observation are this movie and "The Godfather, Part II" (1974).

"The Terminator" (1984) was a modestly successful movie but this sequel was next level. The plot was simple: Skynet, a future worldwide government authority sends a Terminator - a highly advanced killing 'robot' - back to 1995 to kill the future leader of the human resistance to Skynet, John Connor, as he was a young teenager at this time. The resistance sent back an older less advanced Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger reprised his role from the original) to protect Connor from the newer robot. This movie was a huge hit, much bigger than the original and enhanced both Schwarzenegger's and director James Cameron's careers.

The tagline of "Terminator 2 Judgement Day" - "Same make. Same model. New mission," was clever and concise: it combined some of the original with the novelty of a sequel - and summed up the plot beautifully. It was perfect - it sent a message that some of this movie will be the same and that you will like this, but enough of the movie will be different that you will want to see it. It was a winning formula for sequel taglines.

The tagline from "Jaws 2" (1978) was arguably better than the movie itself: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." It harked back to the success of the original but promised more of the same (horror? suspense?) in this movie. The sequel was four years earlier so indeed we had all ventured back into the water but the tagline said we had a false sense of security. It tapped into our primal fear of the unknown (below the sea surface). Pity the movie wasn't as good as the original.

Answer: Alien

The Best Taglines

Any nomination for "Best Tagline" is going to be obviously subjective but this particular tagline consistently appears on many such lists.

"In space no one can hear you scream," from "Alien" (1979) perfectly captured both the vast isolation of space plus the horror of an unknown terrorising alien trapped inside the confines of a small spaceship. This made the spaceship crew both vulnerable and helpless. The tagline was chilling - the fact that no one could hear you scream invoked fears of dread and suspense in the audience and it built anticipation about the vast emptiness and space and the claustrophobia of being restricted to a very small space. The audience rushed to the cinemas in droves.

Some of the better taglines:

"Star Wars" (1977) (later re-titled "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope") - "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

"Blade Runner" (1982) - "Man has made his match... now it's his problem."

"Robocop" (1987) - "Part man. Part machine. All cop."