Recent trailers have revealed plot points that would normally be considered spoilers. Should studios stop doing this?
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I’ve always felt that way about prerelease stuff. Give me a title, a release date, and in the rare cases it’s not a remake/sequel, a hook. I don’t need endless hype.
The craziest trailers are the ones that flash a 5 seconds of clips before starting the actual trailer.
Those are to get your attention if used as an ad because you can’t skip within the first few seconds usually.
They pay for the ads right? Why not just have that 5 second clip be for the ad and not for the actual youtube video?
That 5 second clip is the ad and then it plays the rest of the trailer which is also the ad. They know post people will skip the ad so they have a short spot at the beginning as an attention grabber in hopes you won’t skip.
Yes, although it has been that way for many many years. I also hate the concept of teaser trailers for trailers, as well as “THE. TRAILER. STARTS. NOW!” as if it’s meant to build some kind of hype.
The problem with those videos is that they’re designed for the YouTube advert system. Show the big moments to get them interested and then they sit and watch the ad/trailer rather than skip it.
It looks odd when you’re viewing it separately though.
I’ve commented this before, but this is how you do a trailer. Hollywood can learn a thing or two about subtlety and restraint.
Wow, that was cool.
Instead, we get this over and over again.
The first trailer felt like the sort of thing I could watch - I feel like I have an idea what the movie is about but don’t even know what their voices sound like.
The one you linked is the reason I go out of my way to avoid trailers for literally any media that I might actually like. It spoils enough (even if it isn’t all of it) that it really ruins the media for me.
I’d like to see a trailer that’s made entirely of outtakes (and I don’t mean where they bust out laughing while delivering their lines, more like ad lib, or scenes that got cut or whatever). It’d probably have to be for some sort of comedy, but like “this didn’t make it into the movie, you’ll have to watch it to see what did”. I feel that wouldn’t really spoil the movie, and would still give a decent idea of the thing…
That was a bit too real 😂
Came here to say the same about the Alien Trailer.
I think they both exhibit the same approach: a sequence of slightly moving images (ie very short snippets) that convey no plot (and are likely completely jumbled relative to their in-movie occurrence) … but instead show you the vibe, look and general subject matter of the film. Essentially an appetiser that isn’t the main course at all but is perfectly matched.
Except that tag line … “In space no one can hear you scream” … is likely unmatched.
You’ve reminded me of The Force Awakens teaser trailer. Only a few shots of the main characters with no idea of the story at all.
This also carries on to the next 2½ minute trailer with no clues to the story really. I thought they were well done.
Oh yea! The hype going into the sequel trilogy was very real and a lot of that was the trailer game. I remember seeing this for the first time! It alone probably carried me into about halfway through RoS!
Oh man, I just watched the 2.5 minute trailer … that shit still works! Had me nearly wanting to watch the sequels trilogy again. The promise/potential of that trilogy was soooo high. I’d only made the connection now, but in hindsight there’s real Game of Thrones season 8 energy around the whole thing now. Like even with the Finn jedi fake out, it would have been so much more interesting if he were also a jedi of some sort rather than just “vaguely force sensitive” or whatever.
Now that I think of it, one might even make a teaser an unrelated spin-off to kind of give an impression but not spoil the story.
I wonder if it has been done that way already
that tag line
That actually reminds me of another trailer of a film by the same director of the one I linked. The tag line is “Killing is like smoking. Only the first time is hard”.
Frozen empire was wonderfully restrained as well
They’ve always been progressively getting worse in general. It’s never let up.
Always have been.
If you already know you’re going to watch/play a piece of media, avoid all the marketing. The only thing you gain is a risk of spoilers.
The headline implies that trailers at some point stopped giving away key plots.
Then again, I stopped watching trailers a while ago, so maybe I never noticed that they had stopped.
Yep, the T2 trailer giving away the biggest twist comes to mind. Older trailers straight up went over the key plot points.
I used to watch trailers religiously and completely stopped. Getting fully surprised by the movie itself is so great.
I read up people’s reaction to the trailers but no longer watch them. Or only after watching the movie because some trailers are amazingly well made.
It’s kind of weird at cinemas where I would close my eyes or look around and ignore the trailers.
I’m bringing back that feeling of watching a movie and knowing only what the poster looks like and remembering how fun that was. Sometimes I don’t even know the genre of the movie.
It was iffy there for awhile, but with the advent of superhero movies and the like, it’s gotten way worse. Dropping names of cameos or guest stars, too much of the plot, ruining jokes in the movie, etc.
I don’t even begin to watch trailers unless I know nothing about the film/IP.
Have they ever stopped? When teaser trailers are 2 minutes long you know the next ones will just spoil the entire plot.
I’m sure when I was a lad there were only two types of trailer, or at least the ones I remember. First there was a teaser trailer that would only last for about a minute and was quite coy in what to reveal. Although in fairness, that’s probably because there wasn’t enough footage ready to make a trailer, especially if it contained special effects elements.
The second trailer would later arrive, two minutes at most, containing special effects shots, and it would give you an idea of the film without revealing too much.
What have we got now? The entire film in three minutes to make sure everyone comes to see the film. I don’t, I feel like I’ve seen it and have no plans on watching it now. cough The Fall Guy cough
I agree with your overall sentiment, but I actually was thinking about the trailer I had seen for The Fall Guy as an example of a trailer done with a little more care, before even reading your post. I thought The Fall Guy trailer was cool in that it made you think you knew the whole story but it was a bit of an intentional misdirection. I would have bet $20 going into that movie that I knew the plot … and lost. I will add the disclaimer that I am typically trying not to pay attention to trailers because so many of them do spoil the movie.
I did wonder about the trailer, was it the whole plot or just the start of the film. It’s a bit of a gamble.
I went back to watch both trailers today after seeing the movie last week. One is a lot of plot points but jumbled to make it somewhat unclear (by design?). The other has what you would expect to be full scenes that I don’t even recall from the movie. The full plot is not more than hinted at in either. I enjoyed the movie, and having seen a trailer didn’t take away from that at all, in my experience.
Again, the disclaimer: I agree that plot revealing trailer suck. I typically avoid watching trailers in theaters by looking at my phone or whatever just to distract myself, and never watch trailers at all outside of theaters.
They never stopped.
I explicitly avoid trailers for anything I even remotely want to watch for the plot.
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I intentionally avoid watching a trailer for any movie for fear of spoilers.
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No, give all the details about what kind of movie it is so I can figure out if it’s going to be worth my time. The one thing that’s bad is when the trailer misrepresents the movie’s genre
