The 10 greatest movie taglines ever: “Be afraid. Be very afraid!”
A lot of work goes into advertising a movie.
From the poster to the trailer to endless interviews on the press circuit, plugging a film to the public is far more gruelling than actually making it. One of the lost arts of film promotion is the humble tagline.
Usually a single sentence attached to a poster, this simple phrase is meant to summarise the movie and entice people through the door. They’re quickly becoming a thing of the past, which is a shame, because some of them are epic.
From blood-curdling warnings to uplifting mantras to hilarious jokes, these ten slogans do their jobs perfectly. Some of them are so effective that they’ve transcended cinema, passing into everyday parlance. It’s easy to forget that some of them even came from movies in the first place.
This list is in no particular order, by the way. That will become very important once you reach the top one.
The 10 greatest movie taglines ever:
“In space, no one can hear you scream” – ‘Alien’
The scientific accuracy of this one might be up for debate, but there’s no denying how impactful it’s been on pop culture. The tagline to Ridley Scott’s acid-blooded coming out party has been imitated, parodied, and paid homage to countless times since it first gripped cinemagoers in the late 1970s.
A simple yet highly effective line, it captures the isolation of space travel while letting audiences know that they’re in for a scary time. It might seem a little trite these days, but that’s only because it’s been a classic for the better part of half a century.
“You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies” – ‘The Social Network’
The ‘friends’ mechanic of Facebook played perfectly into David Fincher’s hands when he made his much-lauded Mark Zuckerberg biopic. For a man who helped unite so many people through technology, he had a nasty habit of wrecking his own personal relationships. That’s where this tagline comes in.
The slogan is clever, funny, and foreboding all at once. It simultaneously recognises Zuckerberg’s achievements while also betraying his litany of dark secrets. We’ll have to wait and see if the market team can come up with anything nearly as good for the upcoming sequel.
“An adventure 65 million years in the making” – ‘Jurassic Park’
Steven Spielberg is a little bit goofy, a tad oversincere, but very, very good at what he does. As it turns out, so is the tagline for his most successful movie. Jurassic Park is, in many respects, the perfect blockbuster. It’s got action, it’s got comedy, it’s got special effects that still look great over three decades later.
The promo material for the film is unbelievably corny, but it’s also pretty clever. It sticks in your head, looks cracking on a poster, and ties in nicely with the film’s subject. The only snag? The Jurassic era actually wrapped up around 141 million years ago. Hopefully someone got a right telling-off for that one.
“They’re young, they’re in love, and they kill people” – ‘Bonnie and Clyde’<em> </em>
When Bonnie and Clyde hit the scene in the late 1960s, no one quite knew what to make of it. This brutally honest nod to violence and crime rattled the establishment in a big way and helped kick off a new era of filmmaking – one where being bad suddenly looked pretty good.
The tagline for this era-shifting piece is very self-aware. It starts off perfectly innocent, before hitting readers over the head with the blunt admission that this ain’t your typical romance movie. It immediately set out the film’s mission statement without pulling a single punch.
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” – ‘Jaws 2’
It’s quite funny that, for as terrible a film as Jaws 2 was, its promotional motto has gone down in movie history. The follow up to Spielberg’s shark-themed megahit was about a second great white stalking the beaches of Amity Island. So, why not just make that the tagline? Genius.
The phrase – which has been credited to Andrew J Kuehn, the man who developed the film’s trailer – has become a core part of cinema’s lexicon. It’s become so big, there are people out there who associate it with the original movie, not the sequel. If only that were true.
“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free” – ‘The Shawshank Redemption’
Hope is a major theme of this all-time classic Stephen King adaptation. It’s the main thing Andy (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) disagree on. That’s beautifully captured in the film’s main slogan, which works on various levels.
As well as being highly biblical in nature (another theme), the phrase can also be read literally. Andy’s hope that one day he will escape Shawshank prison is eventually what sets him free. If he had lost that hope, he probably would have died inside. Powerful words from a very powerful movie.
“You’ll believe a man can fly” – ‘Superman’
Superhero movies are a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 1970s, they were a rarity. That’s what makes Richard Donnner’s take on ‘Superman’ so special. It’s very simple by today’s standards, but that’s all it needed to be at the time. This philosophy can be best seen in the film’s market, which harnesses one of Supes’ most iconic abilities.
The flying scenes in Superman left audiences gobsmacked. Seeing Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder glide through the sky to the swell of John Williams’ epic score fired up the imagination of an entire generation. For a moment, they really did believe.
“Does for rock and roll what ‘The Sound of Music’ did for hills” – ‘This Is Spinal Tap’
This Is Spinal Tap almost singlehandedly pioneered the ‘mockumentary’ genre and is still one of the most quoted comedies of all time. Rob Reiner’s examination of hard rock culture is still gut-bustingly funny, with a sense of humour that is surprisingly modern for a film released in the 1980s.
The movie’s bizarre and ridiculous tagline perfectly captures that sense of humour. Weird, semi-poetic, and totally nonsensical, you can picture the band sitting down to think of this line and then celebrating like they’d just reimagined Shakespeare. It’s an 11 out of ten from us.
“Be afraid. Be very afraid” – ‘The Fly’
Imagine if Grave of the Fireflies told you to “Be Sad. Be very sad”. Doesn’t work, does it? So why is that, when David Cronenberg told us to be “Be very afraid” of his version of The Fly, we all took it to heart?
Perhaps it’s because fear is the most direct emotion, the one all feel the strongest and dread the most. Perhaps it’s because no other horror movie had been so concise in telling audiences what to expect. You’ve got to respect the direct approach. Either way, this tagline is now an absolute classic. Whatever they were thinking, it paid off big time.
“Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States” – ‘The Day of the Dolphin’
You can’t talk about movie taglines without mentioning this utterly unhinged one from an equally bonkers film. The Day of the Dolphin is a sci-fi movie about a covert mission to train animals as assassins. Yes, this is real. Yes, it’s just as mental as it sounds.
Seemingly aware of how bonkers this plot was, the marketing team decided to go straight for the jugular. Instead of trying to make the film sound like anything other than a mad idea, they leaned into it, giving us arguably the most unique tagline of all time. Tell me you now don’t want to see this film. I dare you.
