LULZ were had.
Short answer: I don’t. I love trailers and consider them a high point of the movie-going experience. One of the more amusing aspects of hanging out in the Movies section of this board is recognizing that I’m in the extreme minority in this perspective, but I just consider the good trailers little jewels I keep to myself.
There’s a pretty good article on this discussion posted today at The AV Club, the writer articulates my perspective much better than I could.
A good trailer is fantastic. The problem is that most trailers these days are spoilerific garbage.
A trailer should make me want to see a movie, not feel like I’ve already seen the movie.
Ah, hadn’t seen that review of the Smart Case, Pogue. Jeff, you might want to go back to my original Incipio Smartfeather/Smart Cover suggestion. I can vouch hands-on for that combo. The Apple thing looked like it would be similar, but surprisingly, it sounds like Incipio handled the fit better.
I’m not going to argue that there aren’t really bad trailers - I still remember when I saw the trailer for The Negotiator, that movie with Samuel Jackson and Kevin Spacey, and it essentially laid out the plot of the entire film in a single minute. But for me, dodging trailers completely to avoid the bad ones is just too drastic a solution.
Never try to pass a semi making a turn.
I’m also a follower of the hum and close your eyes school of trailer avoidance. Its rather frustrating, but I’ve successfully managed to enjoy the movie experience so much more ever since, without knowing every story beat of the film beforehand. Its gotten so far that I’m starting to avoid reading the blurb on the back of books from authors I enjoy, because those also tend to spell out much of the plot beforehand…
That’s actually a good example because there are two trailers for that film. One of them, which runs about a minute and a half, basically says “He’s a negotiator who is being framed, takes hostages” which is about as simple as you can get and still tell the audience something about the movie, and it shows some action, nothing (if I remember correctly) from the final act. I suppose they could pull all the way back to “He’s a negotiator who takes hostages” and leave motivation entirely out of it, but I think this shorter trailer is still pretty good. The other one, which runs nearly 3 minutes, essentially lays out not only the frame idea but also shows which people are framing him and includes footage from the final parts of the film (when they move from one location to another) and clearly shows you that both Sam and Kevin are going to be working together (where the other trailer barely introduced Kevin at all so you didn’t know he was purposefully an outsider). It’s the second trailer I object to.
And more and more trailers are following the second format.
In my opinion, trailers should be more like what gets released as teasers.
I don’t try to avoid trailers, mostly because I have a terrible memory for plot points and I never remember what was in the trailer two days after I saw it. Also because most of the movies that get big trailers are Hollywood trash so who cares if it gets spoiled. Is it really going to ruin my enjoyment of crap like Prometheus if I know whatever the dumb twist is?
I like watching trailers also. It might be an artifact of my childhood - my dad would always get us to the theater late, so we’d usually miss them (and sometimes the first few minutes of the movie). Also, the vast majority of trailers are for movies I will never see, so being spoiled isn’t a big deal.
I saw Prometheus. What twist did I miss?
Well, maybe none. I haven’t actually seen it yet (though I plan to). I just assumed, since that’s what Hollywood does now. Someone you thought was a good guy invariably turns out to be bad or something is revealed near the end that undercuts everything we thought we knew. If Prometheus avoids that, awesome.
Embrace being a laggard. If you don’t watch movies until after they have been out for 1-2 years you have completely forgotten the trailer.
Note: This is not a good strategy for people who like to have conversations about current films.
Side note: Who want’s to talk about Tree of Life? I just saw it last weekend!
Every now and then on the podcast, Kelly Wand admits his opinion of the movie has been affected by having seen the trailer. Tom and I dutifully pummel him for this, but does he learn? No.
-xtien
“Fasten your seatbelts.”
That’s an admirable attempt, but it’s still impossible to make 2001 look anything but as slow and ponderous as it is!
-TomThat was hilarious, and sadly too true.