The new trailer for “Into the Woods” has dropped and it does feature singing and music…
I’ll third this. It’s always bothered me that the Conan movies (and, I suspect, the TV show, although I haven’t watcjed it) seem to have nothing to do with Robert E. Howard’s writing. You couldn’t prove to me that the makers of any of the Conan movies even read the stories. They don’t feel like Howard at all.
I still find it annoying that the movie that seems to have the largest number of scenes lifted bodily from the Conan stories is the abysmal Sword and the Sorceror.
This was the first thing that struck me about the Into the Woods trailer – they make a trailer for a musical, but don’t include any music? They didn’t say a thing about it being a musical. I had to check the poster when I got out – nope, not a thing. I seriously suspected that they’d cut out all the songs (just as the movie of a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum excised most of that musical’s songs). It wasn’t until just now, when I checked the website, that it was clear they hadn’t done just that.
I haven’t seen the new trailer that supposedly includes music. yet.
Isn’t this more or less true of all “genre” films, after the founding examples? Isn’t this what being a “genre” film means–being aware of the terms?
My wife, daughter, and I toured a trailer production house in LA a couple of years ago and I asked the owners about this, mentioning the film Flight with Denzel Washington. I said that I saw the movie based on the trailer, which made the film seem like a criminal procedural (a plane crashes, did the pilot cause the crash or not?) when the actual movie was a character study about a man bottoming out due to his addiction problems.
Their response: For many films, trailers are specifically made to get people into the film who would otherwise not go.
And that’s what you see with musicals. For fans of Sweeny Todd, you don’t have to highlight that it’s a musical because those who know (especially those who love the play) are going to go anyway. A “relive the experience” trailer is merely wasted money. For those ignorant of Sweeny Todd, the marketers have to decide if it’s better to highlight the music or the fact that it’s a violent murder mystery… and they would do this based upon their estimation of the size of the various audiences for both. And, as a general rule, there are more fans of dramas than there are of musicals, so the drama aspects get highlighted and the musical aspects are eliminated.
So the issue of misleading trailers isn’t one of “the studios have to hide the fact the film is a musical just so people will see it” (if that’s the case, why spend $50mil making the film in the first place), it’s a case of “how do we best position the movie so that the maximum number of people will see it?”
And like I said, this isn’t limited to musicals.
How about the teen slasher movies where every girl that shows her boobs winds up getting butchered?
How about some of the old “hard R” movies like Laura Antonelli used to specialize in?
And, btw, my daughter loves Annie and has the barest idea of the existence of Jay-Z. The idea that 12yo’s don’t know who/what Annie is, is preposterous.
I’m aware that trailers are meant to entice people into the theater – I’ve seen enough misleading trailers, and been burned by what seem to be false promises before. But hiding the fact that film is a musical completely – not just “highlight the drama”, but totally obscuring the fact that it’s a musical, is something n ew. And, I think, absurd. The fact that they’ve already releaszed a musical trailer lets the cat out of the bag. The fact that every review will mention this, and people will speak of it, will mean that “people who don’t like musicals” will find out before they drop the price of admission and end up grumbling through a damned musical, or walk out on it (but the studio already has their money).
Maybe it’s an experiment, but I can’t see this as working. It’s like hiding the fact that a movie is a full-length cartoon in order to entice in people who don’t like cartoons.
As I pointed out, the new trailer does feature singing. Interestingly, it features Meryl Streep singing, but not Anna Kendrick…I wonder if that’s a demographic thing.
I dunno about the slasher movies but I suspect the niche the hard R movies used to fill has been filled by the made-for-cable Skinamax movies. Films like “Sinful Intrigue” “The Naked Detective” “The Witches of Breastwick” “Busty Cops” and “Femalien” to name but a few. They have lots and lots and lots of nudity and sex, none of it hardcore, and to my mind are perfectly adapted to their niche, and would be hard to displace.
There have been a few outliers, naked movies that have actual plots, like “Body of Evidence” and “Vicious Circles” but they are rare.