If you were around in 1998, you probably remember the first time you saw the What Dreams May Come trailer on a grainy VHS or in a darkened theater before a summer blockbuster. It wasn't like other movie promos. Most trailers for big-budget dramas in the late nineties relied on sweeping orchestral scores and voiceovers that sounded like they were announcing a presidential election. This one felt like a fever dream. It felt like someone had dipped a paintbrush directly into the human soul and smeared it across the screen.
Honestly, it’s wild how well that footage holds up.
Robin Williams was at the height of his "prestige" era. He’d just won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting, and people expected him to keep playing the grounded, wise mentor. Instead, the trailer showed him wandering through a literal oil painting. It was a massive gamble for PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. They weren't just selling a movie about grief; they were trying to market a vision of the afterlife that looked nothing like the pearly gates or fluffy clouds audiences were used to seeing.
The Visual Language of the What Dreams May Come Trailer
Most trailers tell you the plot. This one tells you a feeling.
The What Dreams May Come trailer leans heavily on the film’s unique technical achievement: the use of Fuji Velvia film stock. Cinematographer Eduardo Serra and director Vincent Ward wanted the world of the "Painted Wasteland" to look saturated beyond belief. When you watch the trailer today, even in compressed digital formats, that vibrancy pops. You see Chris Nielsen (Williams) walking through a field of flowers that aren't just flowers—they are thick, wet globs of paint.
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It was a nightmare to film.
Basically, they had to use motion control cameras and complex optical compositing that pushed the limits of 1998 technology. When the trailer shows Robin Williams reaching down to touch a flower and his hand comes away covered in blue pigment, it’s a signal to the audience. It’s saying, "This isn't a standard ghost story." It’s an exploration of subjective reality.
Why the Marketing Focused on the Visuals Over the Plot
If you watch the original What Dreams May Come trailer, you’ll notice something interesting: it barely mentions the kids. In the actual film, the death of Chris and Annie’s children is the foundational trauma that sets everything in motion. However, the marketing team likely realized that a story about two dead children and a husband who then dies and has to rescue his wife from hell was... well, a bit of a hard sell for a Friday night date movie.
Instead, the trailer focuses on the scale.
It highlights the "Heavens" and the "Hells." It uses the scale of the production to promise an epic. We see the massive library, the sea of faces in the floor of the underworld, and the soaring flight sequences. It’s a classic example of "visual-first" marketing. They knew the imagery was their strongest asset. Even back then, critics were divided on the script’s sentimentality, but nobody could deny that the movie looked like nothing else on earth.
The Music That Sold the Soul
The music in the trailer isn't actually the score from the film. That’s a common trick, right? The film’s actual score was composed by Michael Kamen (after a previous score by Ennio Morricone was rejected), but the trailer often utilized more "trailer-friendly" swells to build tension. It creates a sense of urgency that the actual movie—which is quite slow and meditative—doesn't always have.
People forget that this was a $85 million movie. In today’s money, that’s a massive investment for an R-rated philosophical drama about suicide and the afterlife. The trailer had to work overtime to convince people that this was a "must-see on the big screen" event.
Comparing the Trailer to the Final Film
Sometimes trailers lie.
The What Dreams May Come trailer suggests a slightly more linear adventure than what we actually got. In the trailer, the journey into "Hell" looks like a high-stakes rescue mission. While it is that, the movie is actually much more interested in the psychological state of Annie, played by Annabella Sciorra.
The trailer also hides the darker edges of the film. It positions the afterlife as a place of wonder. While the movie certainly starts that way, it quickly descends into a very grim, claustrophobic depiction of despair. If you went into the theater expecting two hours of the "painted world" seen in the first thirty seconds of the trailer, you were probably in for a bit of a shock when the screen turned grey and muddy for the final hour.
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Why We Still Talk About It
The legacy of the What Dreams May Come trailer is tied to how we remember Robin Williams.
Seeing him in that trailer now feels different. There’s a scene where his character says, "I can't leave her," and he’s standing in a world of his own making. Knowing what we know now about Williams’ own struggles and his eventual passing, the imagery of a man navigating the depths of his own mind to find peace is incredibly poignant. It’s moved beyond just being a "movie trailer" and become a piece of his cultural iconography.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, beating out Armageddon. That’s a huge deal. A somber drama about the afterlife beat a Michael Bay explosion-fest. The trailer is the reason why. It successfully framed the visual effects not as "stunts," but as "art."
How to Revisit This Aesthetic Today
If you're looking to scratch that itch for "painterly" cinema after re-watching the What Dreams May Come trailer, there are a few places to go.
- Check out the "Making of" featurettes. The practical effects used to create the "wet paint" look are fascinating. They used massive buckets of real paint and high-speed cameras.
- Look for the 4K restorations. The film's color palette is its primary language. Watching a low-res version on a streaming site doesn't do justice to what the trailer promised.
- Compare it to Vincent Ward's other work. The director is actually a painter himself. You can see the DNA of this trailer in his film The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey.
The best way to experience the impact of this film is to view it as a period piece of a time when Hollywood was willing to spend nine figures on "high-concept" original ideas that weren't based on comic books.
Practical Steps for Fans
To truly appreciate the artistry showcased in the What Dreams May Come trailer, you should look into the history of "matte paintings" in cinema. This was one of the last great films to bridge the gap between traditional hand-painted backgrounds and digital compositing.
Start by researching the work of Lidija Pupis and the team at Pacific Data Images (PDI). They are the ones who turned the abstract concepts in the script into the visuals that stopped people in their tracks in 1998. Understanding the labor behind the "Painted World" makes the trailer feel even more impressive when you realize it wasn't just a filter—it was a monumental technical achievement.
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If you're a film student or an aspiring editor, analyze the trailer's pacing. Notice how it uses silence. Most modern trailers are wall-to-wall noise. This one allows the images to breathe, a technique that is becoming a lost art in the era of ten-second social media teasers.
The What Dreams May Come trailer remains a masterclass in atmospheric marketing. It didn't just sell a plot; it sold a vision of eternity that still lingers in the back of the mind long after the credits roll.
To get the most out of your re-watch, find a high-bitrate version of the original theatrical teaser. Pay close attention to the transition at the one-minute mark, where the world shifts from "reality" to the painted afterlife. It's a perfect example of how to use visual contrast to signal a shift in a story's stakes. For a deeper dive, track down the published screenplay by Ronald Bass, which includes descriptions of the visual metaphors that the trailer team worked so hard to capture.