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Our Obsession With Trailers Is Making Movies Worse (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the movie-watching-habits dept.

An anonymous reader shares an article: Our increasing obsession with trailers is changing how we watch movies. We're becoming audiences afraid of surprise, audiences that would rather watch movies we're certain we'll like than risk watching films that surprise us into love. In some cases, this fixation is even lowering the quality of movies themselves by encouraging bad filmmaking habits. The most extreme example happened when Warner Bros released such a successful trailer for 'Suicide Squad' it brought on the company that cut it to edit the whole film -- dropping the director's original cut altogether. [...] Thanks to trailers' easy accessibility on YouTube and those shot-by-shot breakdowns that quickly appear online once trailers drop, anyone interested in a given flick can pore over all the available footage for hours -- even if that leads to major spoilers for them and everyone they share it with.

4 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. I don't know of anyone that watches them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would you since they so often contain spoilers? What kind of idiot wants to ruin a movie just to find out something a little earlier?

    1. Re:I don't know of anyone that watches them by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Take your average movie. Say, anything Michael Bay did lately.

      Now spoiler it in any meaningful way. I dare you.

      Nearly all mass appeal movies of today are so formulaic and predictable that "spoiler" doesn't really describe the problem. The problem is more that it's "seen one, seen 'em all".

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Re:Why should we be different to studios? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Big explosions and tits.

    Come to think of it, why not simply name a movie that way? No trailer needed.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Japanese trailers by Rakarra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This sounds like American film trailers are becoming more like Japanese film trailers. The trailers are often cut to tell much of the plot, and since there's more of a focus on the interests of Japanese women (as opposed to the obsession with American teen boys) they tend to add more emotion to the trailer itself. This is maybe most stark in the trailers for animated films which have a long history in Japan as adult fare, but are still often relegated to the animation ghetto in the USA.

    Compare these two trailers for Inside Out. The American version focuses on slackstick humor, while the Japanese trailer kicks you right in the feels and isn't afraid to spoil the plot.

    Also, the Trailers Always Spoil trope from TV Tropes is always a good read on this.