Less Is More: How Trailers Are Ruining Film

Trailers are ruining movies. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but they sure are not helping matters. With Batman v Superman right around the corner, the usual fanboy feelings I would be geeking out over are mostly subdued because the trailers have shown so much (i.e. Doomsday, possibilities of Darkseid, etc). I feel like I have already seen this movie, and don’t need to pay astronomical admission prices to see it.

Of course I still will, but the point is, I do not feel that sense of wanting to see it as much as “well I might as well see it since nothing better is coming out this week.” Sadly, most movie studios treat their films like this: showing all the juicy materials in trailers and leaving next to no surprises for those that actually see the film. Thankfully there is hope for change embodied through directors like Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams.

The Good

Making waves in the box office this month is 10 Cloverfield Lane. The sequel (?) that we forgot we wanted is making big headlines not only for being a great film but also for the fact that no one knew it was coming until about three months before its release. And the world went WILD. Conspiracy theories started popping up as to its connections to the original 2008 kaiju, critics like myself were shocked that they were able to keep it under wraps, and J.J. sat in his studio laughing at us all. Though he was not the director of either Cloverfield or 10 Cloverfield Lane (he only produced), the marketing strategy was very much the same: give them just enough to get excited and then starve excited viewers of new content until the movie releases in theatres.

Abrams did the exact same thing for arguably the most anticipated movie of this generation, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Though a bit more footage was released this time around, the basic strategy was still the same. Let people be surprised by what happens in a theatre rather than just waiting for story elements to inevitably move in the direction of a grossly stuffed trailer. It is a tough balancing act, trying to give viewers enough in a preview to excite but still hold back so as to not give away too much.

Another bold pioneer in this movement is Christopher Nolan. Before Inception or Interstellar released, no one had much of a clue as to what was going on. With Inception, we knew there were guns and strange physics having something to do with dreams and that was it. Interstellar kept an even tighter lid, letting us know that something was going on in space annnnnd cut.

Despite a lack of information, these premises and reputation of an excellent director were able to carry the hype enough to get a great box office turnout. The conclusion that can be made from this is that less is more. The more surprises that wait around the corner the better, and that is a big reason why people get excited for a Nolan or Abrams film – we know that eventually there is going to be a big twist that throws everything on its head.

The Bad

But then, there’s the other side. Other directors and their marketing teams decide to pump as much content as possible into a two-minute long video segment to get people hyped up. Take this past February’s Deadpool for example. I personally loved this film and the bold direction it took with a bad superhero/anti-hero take on our protagonist, but I would have loved it a lot more if most of the cool action scenes and funny jokes were kept out of the previews.

Due to a low budget, Deadpool had to restrict itself to roughly three main action sequences, all of which were showcased in detail in the trailer. I still fanboyed my heart out seeing the scarlet devil wield his dual katanas, yet the feeling was diluted by the surprises having already been spoiled. Trailers are great tools for exciting audiences, but productions have to learn to pump the brakes with their hard created content. Otherwise, there really is no point to seeing their movie at all.

The Ugly Moral

My point is this: less is more when it comes to trailers. I am not saying that studios should not market a film at all, as that would be production suicide. Directors should simply be stingier with their hard labored footage that has been made to entertain. If all the cool sequences from a film are shown for free in the trailer, then we really have no business paying theater prices to see it again. While we may tell ourselves that we want to see more in the moment, the reality is that seeing more completely ruins the experience that we moviegoers love so much: to be entertained.

Do you think trailers show too much or not enough? Let us know in the comments!