August 29, 2024
"Movie Trailers Have Gotten Worse. Why Aren’t Studios Having Fun With Them? Promos give away too much or too little or are misleading or don’t leave anything out."
Writes Esther Zuckerman in the NYT with lots of examples of old trailers that were really good and various bad new ones. I'm using my second-to-last gift link of the month on this one, so check it out.
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The movies have gotten much worse. It is very difficult to put lipstick on a pig.
"Why Aren’t Studios Having Fun With Them?"
In point of fact they're not having much fun with the movies themselves either.
Phoning it in. "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown is a great song but it's been in so many movie trailers.
With studios scrambling to fill theaters, they seem to be struggling to figure out what kind of trailers will draw audiences.
How about making a proactive original movie? Or a movie that genuinely makes EVERYONE in the theater laugh.
Best part about waiting for the movie to stream, is when you figure out it sucks in the first few minutes, you can bail and didn't waste any time or money.
Back when David Cross was still funny, he and Bob Odenkirk made this great parody of movie trailers.
Coupon The Movie
well they hate their audience, that's one problem,
CliffsNotes can't make a shitty book any more enjoyable to read.
It follows that if the quality of movies is going down (because less people seem interested in the product) so would the promotion and everything else that goes with it. Less people are going to theaters, and I suspect even less people are watching at home.
The boring group-think run Hollywood.
The problem is that no trailer will entice me to return to a movie theater. Covid taught me that streaming is quite satisfactory.
Movies have gotten worse. But my "Frankenstein, Part II" will save the industry!
Well, the trailers use material from the movies to try to make the movies look their best, so... it follows ....
Say, shouldn't Kamala be talking about this? It's got that nice circular, pointless, tautological feel to it....
they greenlit I Frankenstein, which has it's moments,
Trailers be damned...just bringing a UV blacklight to a movie theater would convince 99% of people to avoid those biohazards permanently.
Movies like "Babe" (1995) were not rare, they were expected in fact, unlike now.
Trailers can be helpful. Back in 2016 I watched the trailer for the Melissa McCarthy all-female reboot of “Ghostbusters” and realized that all the funny scenes in the trailer included the male comedian. So I saved my money.
The central problem with movies is the absurd cost of making one. Because they are so expensive, they have to be completely safe, no chances can be taken. Among the easiest ways to make a movie safe is to make it a sequel starring a big name. Which means no new material and because of their exaggerated importance to the movie's success, the big names can command huge salaries, further driving up cost.
It's a death spiral of increasing costs with no new actors and no new ideas.
I would argue that they’re having too much fun, at the expense of their audience. And the audience has worked it out, and is staying home
there are scads of material, but modern script writers are unable to process them, because of their so called 'woke' sensibilities,
Reading this it seems Mz Althouse needs exposure to The Critical Drinker and all this would be quickly explained.
There's a freshness and quirkiness to the trailers of the 60s and 70s, maybe because movies were fresher and quirkier back then. Now it's all about explosions per minute. Voiceover ("This is Harry. Harry has a problem ...) has all but vanished from trailers. That's a pity. There was more comedy, irony, and inventiveness in the old trailers -- and even fifty years later one recognizes the voices of the trailers' narrators (better voices than the usual dubbed ones now familiar from anime).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6toXVLt4laA&t=448s a recent example
When the dominant decision facing a movie scene is "could this possibly help Trump", movies will end up actively pro-Trump or devoid of joy.
Both polarities fail as entertainment.
If they wanted to be saved.
I'm annoyed that no editor at the NYT took Esther Zuckerman by the hand and gently explained to her that there was never a golden age of movie trailers. They could be just as bad 40 years ago as they are today.
It’s a damn shame that Cross lost the plot.
Ding, ding, ding.
Trailers may have gotten worse because movies have gotten worse. Just a theory.
As for the trailer to "A Quiet Place, Day One", the two previous movies from this 'franchise' have had a very strong viewership. The original has made $341 million, the sequel made about $300 million. My point is that there is not a lot needed to draw fans of this franchise out to see the 'prequel', talked about here. The trailer shows you it's the story of the beginning. People interested in the storyline will be there to see it. No need to get into a character's cancer. That is NOT the draw and would never be the draw.
The thing I find irritating with trailers is that they can sometimes make a bad movie look good enough to watch. They do this by showing you the 2 or 3 best lines in the entire movie, in the trailer. Then you watch the movie and, early on, you realize you've been had. Such as "The Instigators" on Apple +. Awful movie with a good cast and 2 good lines. I saw both of them in the trailer.
Lastly, I love Stanley Kubrik's movies. His trailers are incredibly annoying to watch. Anyway...all that said, I love trailers and actually watch them regularly on YouTube. I tend to judge what I'll see or not, via the trailer. But sometimes I am fooled, such as in "The Instigators". I should have smelled that stench from across the room.
Yah, The Social Network trailer is one of the best- well done. The Exorcist freaked me out back in the day. Jaws....I sat through credits at Who Framed Roger Rabbit to watch the Star Wars Ep. 1 trailer again...Most of the Bad Robot trailers are good. The Mission Impossible trailers are exciting. 5/4 time does that I guess...
"In a world..." But seriously, I saw a 30-second promo for a sci-fi show on Netflix. Seemed OK so I read the reviews. It seems that the sci-fi element was the least of the show and it was more of an excuse to have lots of hot women and tits on screen. Not that I object to that, but sometimes a man just wants to see sci-fi.
The number of people I've seen in movie theaters could fit into a movie trailer.
A few items:
I'll start with I saw my first movie in a theater since "Top Gun: Maverick". I saw "Deadpool and Wolverine". Ironically, the best part of the experience was a trailer before the movie. In two weeks, that theater will be showing "Blazing Saddles" on the big screens. Without a doubt, I was more excited about possibly seeing that movie over "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice".
The second thing is a trend that can be seen in the previous paragraph. "Blazing Saddles" was an original movie, at least compared to the sequel to "Top Gun", the trilogy of "Deadpool", and the long, um waited?, sequel to "Beetlejuice". Whether the audience wants it or not; the studios aren't exactly making movies that will surprise the audience on the content of them, so what purpose does a trailer serve beyond telling you the next installment comes out on a given date. They don't make trailers for serial TV shows (unless they are an Amazon Prime series and most of those just show a few scenes and tell you when it is coming out).
I did read the article. I thought this was interesting:
"“A Quiet Place: Day One” didn’t seem very interesting based on the trailers, in part because they didn’t share much information about the characters or the story at all."
It is a prequel. That means not only do we know the setting of the story, we also know the outcome of the story before we even see the movie. That is if you saw "The Quiet Place". If you didn't, then I'll agree you probably won't be interested in the Prequel of it, especially only seeing the trailer. But I don't know what more the studio can do for a trailer of a prequel, when you already know the outcome of the story, at least beyond comforting you that the prequel won't wreck the original story the way Disney Star Wars is doing to its canon.
As for "Fall Guy", I saw that on streaming a couple of weeks ago. Why? I'm a fan of Emily Blunt. Not enough to see "A Quiet Place", because I'm not into horror/suspense, but enough to have a fun movie in the background. So, I just needed to see she was in it. I knew the subject, because I'm old enough to know the TV series. Also, my first exposure to the new movie was actually a YouTube video promo that was just Ryan Gosling doing a version of carpool karaoke with the stunt drivers. It was a fine enough promo that wasn't at all a trailer. Perhaps that could have been the trailer, and it would have done everything the trailer might have done without revealing too much or the entire movie. As the movie is basically nothing but stunts, then a promo with nothing but stunts is the entire movie. The plot of the movie makes about as much sense as a weekly tv show plot. If you want a good movie with a good trailer on making movie stunts, I recommend "The Stunt Man"
the times editor wouldn't know the difference,
most of the offerings I've seen on Netflix don't warrant the cost,
Great article, thanks for sharing it Professor, as I don't have access to the NYTimes. I particularly enjoyed the linked trailer for Citizen Kane, which I had never seen, even though I've watched many commentaries on the movie. Mr. Welles brings his trademark creativity.
I watch many more trailers than I see movies. My complaint is that trailers use music that won't be in the movie, so it's a bit of false advertising. I enjoyed the trailer for Argylle, which was done in part to Suspicious Minds, a song not included in the film. Evidently the actual music in the movie is usually not available in time to make it into the trailer.
I was looking forward to that film Matthew Vaughn has really lost the plot
I remember that movie, it was a fun one. Peter O'Toole is a convincing sociopath.
I went and hunted down what other people thought. Dunkirk worth a mention. Meh to the rest...
Well, whatever else you do, do not skimp on a good armorer. And do plan to have everyone attend the mandatory safety briefings.
I'm a chicken when it comes to horror movies, so I don't watch them (sometimes I read the plots online if the storyline intrigues me enough, but that's as far as I get). I saw the trailer for "Speak No Evil," and it certainly seemed horrifying. But I was very surprised when they showed the "mute" kid making scissor motions with his fingers implying that his tongue had been cut out. Isn't that a pretty big spoiler?
Anyway, I went to read the plot from the Danish version, and holy hell, I still didn't see the end coming. Even reading it left me with a pit in my stomach. But...I still think it would have been better to not spoil the fact that the boy had his tongue cut out. That itself, I think, would have been a very shocking, unsettling reveal.
The "Jaws" trailer has one of the all-time great trailer lines, "It is as if God created the Devil and gave him...Jaws."
I have always found the trailers for Kurosawa movies to be riveting. Both when I originally saw them in the 80's, and when I rewatch them on (Criterion) DVDs. You can find the Yojimbo trailer on youtube as an example.
Aggie, you might like this: The Stunt Man (1980) - The Sinister Saga of Making the Stunt Man A documentary movie longer than the original movie made before RedLetterMedia existed. The documentary is better than "The Fall Guy" as a movie while showing what it takes to make a movie about making movies.
Responding to "make a bad movie look good enough to watch"
Not mentioned by the New York Times is the recent habit of trailers showing things that were edited out of the movie. This has led to lawsuits in California for false advertising. A case in question was the movie "Yesterday" that showed actress Ana de Armas in the trailer but who was completely cut out of the film release. I remember the "Star Wars Rogue One" trailer which included several scenes cut from the final edit of the movie.
My house was in the Underdog trailer...
I'm glad they mentioned The Fall Guy. The movie was Top Gun: Maverick enjoyable, but the trailer did not adequately convey it. And they showed all the set pieces.
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