OK I’m sure I am not the first or the last old git to pit trailers nowadays
But seriously WTF is wrong with people (or the film industry) that they need every last plot twist laid out in the fucking trailer.
Case in point the new Aquaman trailer, I don’t personally care about the franchise, its been pretty mediocre superhero fair, but the new trailer just dropped.
And… actually that is the perfect amount of trailer, if anything a bit too much (I mean what if I don’t want to know who the nemesis is ?), but doesn’t reveal anything about the plot other than its an Aquaman sequel and has a bad guy, you know everything you need to know before watching the movie.
But noooo, that’s not the trailer to the movie, that’s the trailer to the trailer, the actual trailer is still to come and will I’m sure reveal everything you need to know about the film, so that there is no point actually watching it.
"In a world where leisure suit whores with titles like “Lord High God/Goddess of Marketing” have free reign over both creativity and perceived profitability ( and bull whip people in the cutting rooms in the afternoons just for fun ) there is only One true Hero.
The Almighty Buck.
[ /Movie Narrator Guy Voice ]
“Can you see it? Did it survive?”
“It’s hard to tell; there’s cheap popcorn and butter all over my profitability sensors…”
"Switching to Big Four Accounting. Buckle into your seats for Hyper-Screwing…!
Sadly the attention span of the public is now such that it is neccesary to shove as much informaion as possible in a short time span in order to have a chance of getting their money. The quality of the work they are selling often suffers when they do this. Its just shove it in your face as fast as possible without any character development in many instances.
But someday the pendulum will swing back when people just get sick of the crap being produced by this mindset.
I see this on reddit a lot. Nothing about complaints about trailers giving too much away. But then when a trailer comes along and is an actual teaser, it’s nothing but complaints that it doesn’t make sense becuase they didn’t give the entire plot.
No, dear, this is not, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf”, it’s a super hero movie with spectacular special effects, explosions, wild action and, eventually, the good guy defeating the bad guy. So, to target and attract their demographic, they need to show a ton of special effects, explosions, and wild action. “Subtle” is definitely not in the equation. LOL
I met a friend for an action movie on a huge screen, and he proposed “Let’s get our tickets, then chat in the parking lot until the previews are done.”
“What?!? No… I love a good trailer.”
After one of those, I said “Annnd, now we don’t have to see the movie.” “We just saw all the good bits, didn’t we?”
The people who make and release the trailers don’t care about how it affects your enjoyment of the actual movie if and when you see it. They just care about making you want to see the movie. And they have reason to believe that stringing together the “highlights” of the movie is the best—or at least the easiest—way of accomplishing this.
And, as evidenced by some of the discussions we’ve had here on the SDMB about spoilers, there are a significant number of people who don’t mind spoilers or who actually prefer them—they want to know going in exactly what they’re going to get from a movie.
And there are also people whose memories are such that they don’t remember the details of the trailer by the time their watching the actual movie, so those reveals don’t affect their enjoyment of the movie.
The same mindset extends to TV shows and movies as well. People complain about anything left to the viewers’ imaginations. They want everything fully explained.
For me, the big one was for the original Wonder Woman movie. I liked the movie well enough, but every single cool part of the movie had been shown to me in the trailer. There were no surprises, or excitement, just a bunch of “oh yeah, this is when she does that thing.”
The trailer should show the fourth or fifth coolest thing from the movie. I guess that is a problem when the movie only has one or two cool things.
I now don’t seek out any trailers, because they so frequently spoil the few movies I do want to watch. This is a shame for me, because in many cases the trailers would tell me I definitely did not want to see the movie. If you can’t even find two minutes from your movie that make me want to see it, then it is not the movie for me. Sort of like how half the samples at Costco convince me not to by whatever it was I just ate.
I am completely on board with this pitting. I turn the trailer off the second I decide to watch or not watch a film and that is usually after the first 10 seconds.
Anyone else wonder if they’ve already seen a film they’re watching for the first time because scenes come up that you saw weeks ago in trailers? That happens to me all the time.
My brain is wired to remember film, which is why I no longer mess with movies or shows that involve hurt children. Years later I will remember that abuse, torture, molestation, whatever and I will carry that fictional event around with me and ruminate on it from time to time and I don’t want that, that is not entertainment.