14 March 2010

Trailer Alert

Too many trailers reveal too much information.

I saw the trailer for this orange and it spoiled it.

Warning! By nature of the topic, this post will most likely contain spoilers for certain films mentioned. I'll do my best to flag all of them and keep them separate so you can still read the parts that don't involve the films you haven't seen yet.

Shutter Island

So I recently went to see Shutter Island (here's what I thought). While I certainly enjoyed it and found it to be well made, the end of the film was obvious. In fact, it was so obvious, I saw it coming from the trailer. Seriously you guys! I first saw the Shutter Island trailer about 6 years ago and as I watched I was thinking "ok cool, Scorsese, interesting, DiCaprio, good, Kingsley, spooky" but then once DiCaprio uttered the line "What she seems to be suggesting, is that you have a 67th patient" I immediately said to myself "DiCaprio is the 67th patient." This moment was followed by a montage of DiCaprio's character clearly hallucinating and experiencing high levels of stress, in case there was any doubt in our minds as to the ending of the film. I went into the cinema 2 days ago hoping I was wrong. I wasn't. What up with that?

Turns out he's Jesus

Sure it's not the most blatant example I can think of, in fact if I hadn't seen it coming from the trailer, I'd have picked up on it pretty fast while watching the film, but it's still irritating. The worst offender I think I've seen (and I invite you to show me worse) is Soylent Green...

Now, I've never actually seen Soylent Green. I admit it! But I've known the ending for a while due to its legendary nature and it's mentioning in various TV shows when I was growing up. Not least of which is the Simpsons.

I'm disappointed too

But it's not their fault! If any of them had seen a trailer for Soylent Green before it came out they'd have had it ruined too! Take a look at this damn thing:

Soylent Green

The trailer does a pretty great job of building up the suspense and intrigue. As an audience member you're sitting in the cinema thinking "ooooh, interesting. I wonder what the hell Soylent Green is! I'm definitely going to go see that, if only to find out the answer!" But hey folks, don't fret! We'll tell you now! At around the 2:40 mark, we know what Soylent Green is. Gee, thanks guys!

Dammit Chuck!

Here's another suck ass example:

Halloween

Not only does it give away the opening twist, but if you're going to see this film for the scary tense scenes where the masked villain chases Christopher Guest's wife with a blade, do you really want all those scenes shown to you before you've seen the movie. If you went to see Halloween after seeing the trailer, everytime something happened you'd just say to yourself "Oh, here's that bit." If I were John Carpenter and I was shown this trailer in the editing room I'd have just said "Don't you show anyone this goddamn trailer"

Seriously, if anyone sees this, you're fired.

Now that trailer brings me to my next beef, trailers that don't so much give away a twist ending, but tell you the entire friggin story. Soylent Green and Halloween do tell us quite a lot considering they're 2-3 minute advertisements for the films. But hey, that's how they did it back in the seventies right? They don't do it like that anymore of course!

Oh wait...

Changeling

Sure we don't see how it ends, but we know way too much.

Sidenote:
Let me tell you why I've never seen Changeling. I first heard of this film whilst idly browsing Clint Eastwood's IMDB page. (We've all done it) And I see he had a new film coming out... 'Changeling'. "Hmmm," I thought "What's this about?" So, I read a brief plot synopsis, that said something along the lines of "A woman loses her son only to have him return to her but she starts to suspect that the person living in her house is not her real son." Now the image in my head was not that of the film, but of a boy who disappeared and say, 30 years later, returned as a grown man and moved in with his mother and then she starts to suspect him. I then read the first two names on the cast list: Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich. This gave me a really creepy chill down my spine as the image of John Malkovich pretending to be her son was so disturbing I was terrified.
So when I saw the actual trailer I was so dissappointed that the plot was not as I imagined I never got around to seeing it. True story!

Mom, I had a bad dream.
Can I sleep in your bed?

But hey, it's not all bad eh? There are some stunningly great examples of trailers. Old and new! Here are two of my favourites:

Inception

Our friend DiCaprio returns with the exact opposite of the Shutter Island trailer. This one for Inception tells us all we need to know if we're deciding whether to go see it or not. It's gripping, it's spooky and most importantly, it's intriguing. We want to know more. How will we find out more? Go see it!

All information can be found here

And finally my super favourite trailer I ever did see:

The Shining

If you knew nothing about this film or the story and this trailer came on the cinema screen, you'd either go away saying "What the fuck was that!!? I'm definitely seeing it!" or "What the fuck was that!!? I'm definitely not seeing it!"

Its audience is found immediately. No one is missed and no one is decieved. But would we really expect any less from Stanley Kubrick?

Where did he get all that blood?

Basically what I'm saying is, use a trailer to tell me if it's my kind of movie, not the entire friggin plot. I think filmmakers need to have more say over the release of their material and the presentation of their films in the advertising because I doubt anyone creatively involved in Soylent Green wanted the ending to be publically revealed in the marketing. It's a matter of control.

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