If you want you can think of this as a follow-up/rehash of that spoilers post I did a few weeks back. Not that it covers the same material per se, but it covers similar internet reactions to similar portions of media. Instead of talking about the merits of not giving away the final moments of certain stories, let’s talk about the opposite: the parts they show before the movie or game or show is even out.
In fact, spoilers and trailers are more related than one might realize. There are numerous people on the internet that swear by not watching trailers, believing that they’re either deceptive marketing out to trick you or give away way too much of any given movie. There are people say that theaters play too many and people that say they have to see all of them.
There’s definitely an art to a good trailer. The one for Suspiria (2018), for example, seems like one you’d get tired of seeing after a certain point, but I never seemed to. Madeline’s Madeline (2018)’s trailer, too. What makes both of these work, I think, is how instead of describing the plot, they’re big on conveying the emotion of the film. For Suspiria, that was dread. For Madeline’s Madeline, that was its dream logic.
We’ve certainly moved on since “In a world…” (not the 2013 movie (obligatory trailer link)).
There are other, similar promotional materials as well. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) had a few prequel (interquel?) short films before its release, as did Alien: Covenant (2017). These tend to be the more nostalgia-driven films, I’ve noticed, but it’s something I’ve noticed as far back as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), which had an additional scene with a character who otherwise starts the movie very much dead. There’s not much to say about these because they’re exactly what they are: superfluous to the main story, which is why they aren’t in the film.
But that brings up an interesting idea. Trailers don’t have to show what’s in the movie. Like I mentioned, this can cause some consternation among audiences who feel lied to. It seems like every horror movie A24 produces falls victim to this, including It Comes At Night (2017), which I’ve talked about before. To elaborate, it seems like they prefer slower-burn horror, but they always want to market it as more standard fare to attract an audience. The most recent example of this was High Life (2019), which has a trailer promising space-horror, but it’s written and directed by Claire Denis, a French arthouse filmmaker. Now, I understand being frustrated, but one does have to remember that they’re being sold something.
I’ve been trying to talk about the better side of trailers because I’m firmly in the “I enjoy them,” camp. Really, the only trend I’ve found annoying about trailers is how they tend to announce themselves online. As advertisements, I mean, there’s been a huge push to have the first five seconds be an ad in itself so that people don’t skip past them on Youtube (for an example, see that Blade Runner 2049 trailer). It’s like how jpeg compression can slowly ruin images, combining bits together saves data but it means it ends up as a flash of incomprehensible images and sound. I imagine some poor editor, having made what they think is a pretty good trailer, being forced to hack away at it until only the explosions and thrills remain.
But there are also the bad ones. The ones people can only wonder how bad the movie’s going to be if it’s going to sell itself like this. Sonic the Hedgehog (which I’m not going to link here) had a trailer so bad it’s causing artists to probably go into a crunch period to fix some of its more out-there aspects, and even without those its best selling point is probably hoping that people see it to laugh at it (or Jim Carrey, I guess). Because again, it’s an artform. It’s meant to be judged.
Again, these things are trying to sell something. I don’t want to downplay that. When I say I like watching trailers, I’m still participating as a consumer, not so much as a critic. So that’s at least one reason to be wholly against them. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have seen some of the smaller movies I’ve seen without some of these trailers, so the idea of completely ignoring them just seems completely foreign to me.
-F
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