Spoiler trailers

Movie trailers! We all love them. Getting excited about new movies. Some trailers are good, some are bad. The good ones usually show a couple of cuts from the movie. “Once upon a time”…”action”…”crying”……”shouting”. “He is out for revenge” yadayadayada, the usual stuff.

However, the great ones…..the great ones know how to pique your interest WITHOUT showing much of the movie at all. They keep the plot of the movie shrouded in a cloud of mystery, usually reinforced by killer sound-design and background music.

Nowadays, I feel that there aren’t many GREAT movie trailers. Current trailers are usually a 2 minute spoiler fest. This is really disappointing. The purpose of the trailer is to make you WANT to watch the movie. However, if you put all the best scenes inside the trailer, that kind of ruins the fun. The surprise effect is gone.

Check for example this Interstellar trailer.

It shows barely anything of the actual movie yet keeps you wanting to know more about the plot.

Then there’s the Dunkirk teaser trailer.

Again, it shows very little of the actual movie. Granted they are both by the master Christopher Nolan. So to prove my point:

The Suicide Squad trailer.

And we all remember how that turned out.

Last but not least, Godzilla. Great sound-design.

Of course there are many more examples.

This trailer thing reminded me about the sneak-preview system we had in Dutch cinema’s. I’m sure other countries have something similar.

Every Wednesday night at 6 PM, my friends and I gathered at the movie-theater. Sneak-Preview tickets were only half the price of a usual ticket and we could watch a NEW movie without knowing WHICH movie would be shown. It could be a total crapfest or it could be a huge title. I really liked that system. Not only was it cheap but it would give the people a chance to see the more rare titles. That was GREAT!

I’ll show a few example tickets that I kept throughout the years.

A Bugs Life

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Saving Grace

The Matrix

The Red Violin

Virus

As you can see, a broad variety of genres: “Action, Drama, Animation etc”.

I think the fact that you wouldn’t know what movie would be shown would actually open you up more to that movie. I think you could appreciate the movie more.

For example, I would have NEVER watched Saving Grace or The Red Violin if I would come across these movies. Yet I would’ve definitely watched Virus. Which is a shame because the first two were great movies and Virus a total crapfest.

Of course we also have to look at our current lifestyle compared to that of 10 years ago when there was no social networking. Now with social networks its easier to hear about a movie and of course it getting spoiled. In fact if you are a twitter-user its extremely hard NOT to read any spoilers about movies before you’ve actually seen them. Something that really sucks.

So we need shorter and more mysterious movie trailers in the future in order to enjoy movies more is what I think.

That and we need less remakes…..

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