"Black" Trailer
"Looks like we're gonna be doing this the hard way."
Directed by Monty Oum
"Your hopes have become my burden. I will find my own liberation..."
The third promotional trailer for Rooster Teeth's web series, RWBY.
Blake and Adam deal with unwanted company after hijacking a freight train.
Tropes in this trailer include:
- Anti-Hero: Blake cares enough about the idea of killing innocent people to abandon her partner, Adam, and cut the train carriages to ensure no-one gets hurt. However, she is robbing a train at the time and destroying security measures to do so. Theft and property destruction is therefore something she clearly doesn't have a problem with.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: When Blake and Adam find themselves surrounded and outnumbered by massive security robots, they stand back-to-back before fighting them. Together, they wipe out the security measures without being injured.
- Blade on a Rope: This trailer establishes that Blake can use the ribbons attached to her sword and sheathe to attack at range. She can also fire the machine pistol while doing this as well, making it simultaneously a gun on a rope.
- Bridal Carry: When they locate the carriage that contains what they've come to steal, a much more powerful security robot attacks them. Blake can't damage it and is thrown to the floor. Just before the robot can kill her, Adam rescues her, carrying her away from the robot in his arms. Neither of them comment on it, and when he sets her back on her feet, they strategise how to deal with the robot like nothing happened.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: When surrounded by the security robots, they contemplate their situation for a moment and then Adam says "Looks like we're doing this the hard way". Blake retorts in amusement "Don't be so dramatic" as if their lives aren't currently in danger from the killer robots that are lining up against them.
- Dual Wielding: The trailer establishes that Blake can fight with two weapons, one of which is the sheath itself, which functions like a cleaver. She can even dual-wield both weapons when in ribbon form, effectively using using two Blade on a Rope weapons at the same time.
- Establishing Character Moment: Blake and Adam spend the trailer getting on board a train and destroying the security measures so that they can rob it. When Adam instructs Blake to set the charges, Blake hesitates and asks "what about" about the innocent crew who are on board the train that's about to be blown up. A darkly amused Adam asks "What about them?" and carries on what he's doing without a second thought. Blake doesn't look happy at all. At the end of the trailer, she abandons Adam, cutting his carriage loose from the rest of train and herself along with it. The trailer clearly establishes that Adam has absolutely no regard for the lives of innocents while murdering the innocent is a line Blake refuses to cross.
- Foreshadowing: The cargo that Blake and Adam are trying to steal are covered in the same symbol that first appears in the White Trailer, where it can be seen on Weiss's clothing, at the back of the stage on which she is singing and in the windows of the room in which she fights the Knight. The significance of this connection is revealed in Volume 1 of the main show.
- Mix-and-Match Weapon: The trailer shows Blake's weapon can be used as a sword, machine pistol, and a sickle/gun at the end of a ribbon. She can also dual-wield with the sheath, which is sharpened to function as a cleaver; this can also be wielded at the end of ribbon.
- Variable-Length Chain: The trailer introduces the quirk of Blake's weapon appearing to have a ribbon that's as long as it needs to be. Most of the time, the ribbon doesn't look particularly long, but it can cover an extremely long range in battle.
- Weird Moon: A slight broken edge to the right-hand side of the moon is first seen in the White Trailer. However, at the beginning of the Black Trailer, the moon looks half shattered, with large chunks of broken moon being visible on the broken (right-hand) side. This trailer is the first time it is established just how badly broken the moon is.
"Goodbye."
