The Problem with Trailers

Movie trailers have always been something I’ve liked since I was a kid. I still remember the teaser trailer for Emmerich’s Godzilla that was just the fisherman accidentally catching Godzilla. It was awesome and made the movie look cool. There was also the teaser for the 2000 Grinch film that was just very short clips of him stealing Christmas, set to In the Hall of the Mountain King. It just worked. Now, we get trailers that are just a mess. There are just so many problems that I just need to elaborate on them a little before I suggest ways to save the movie trailer.

Part One – Giving Away the Goods

To start with, the purpose of a trailer is to get people to look forward to a movie. It isn’t to give a short recap of the film. More and more, trailers are giving away most of the plot of the movie. I’ll use Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania as an example. The trailer shows them getting sucked into the quantum realm, that Janet knows Kang, that Kang blackmails and betrays Scott, that M.O.D.O.K. is in the movie, and that Kang almost kills Scott. That last item was also in the last 15 minutes of the movie. That movie was the first real appearance of Kang the Conqueror, the third of a franchise people liked, and part of the MCU machine. Why did Marvel think they needed to show so much?

This isn’t an isolated MCU problem. So many movie trailers show so much of the plot of their movies. It can’t really be insecurity of the studios. We just had Dune: Part 2 that showed brief parts of most of the plot points, but there was just so much more of the movie that was left to be revealed. Movies are better when there are surprises. Deadpool & Wolverine’s first trailer was released during the Super Bowl last month. There are rumors we are getting major cameos. None of them showed up in the trailer, but we all know we are getting a second trailer probably in May. Watch Marvel spoil those like they coyly did for the Doctor Strange 2 Professor X cameo in that trailer.

Part Two – They are Too Long!

A big reason why studios are giving away too much plot in trailers is they are given so much real estate to do just that. If you have a 3 minute trailer, then obviously you need 3 minutes of material. That isn’t the purpose of this section though. Trailers just take up too much time before a movie starts. As a test case, when I saw Imaginary, there were 8 trailers. Half of them clocked in at over 2 minutes. In total, they added 16 minutes to the start of the movie. 8 trailers is already annoying, but having to sit through long trailers (looking at you, Arthur the King) is just maddening.

As of this posting, there are two great trailers that get the point across. The trailer of A Quiet Place: Day One has barely any dialogue. It shows a brief scene of the first two films in the series, then shows a bit of the aliens first showing up, and then ends. It’s enough to set the tone and get people excited. No other trailer should be needed, and it’s done in an economical 94 seconds. The other example just came out this past week. That is the teaser for Alien: Romulus. That teaser is perfect, and there really doesn’t need to be another one either. Too bad I’ll never see the film though. That tease of a facehugger swarm is enough to count me out.

Part Three – Case Study

In this part, I will be spoiling the film Arthur the King. If you want to see that one, and don’t want to know anything about beforehand, I’ll see you down in Part 4.

As I hinted at in Part 2, I have special disdain for the Arthur the King trailer. It is 2 minutes and 24 seconds long. I now people hated seeing the Argylle trailer over and over again before movies, but Arthur is so much worse. In the trailer, it tells us: 1) Wahlberg’s team is a race, 2) the dog finds them, 3) he finds them miles later then, 4) he saves Wahlberg’s team from falling off a cliff, 5) the team making him part of the team 5) he gets sick. That is a lot for a trailer. We also get a song change half way through. I’ve been sure for months that the trailer gave everything away. So, when I saw the movie, I was hoping to be wrong. I wasn’t.

There is maybe three or four scenes in the movie don’t show in the trailer. We don’t see Wahlberg trying to get a sponsor or getting the team together, or Leo getting dehydrated, or Arthur trying to swim after the team after he is forced to stay behind. We also don’t see anything at the US animal hospital. However, almost everything else in the film can be found in some way in the trailer. That part I said about Arthur swimming? You do see him running on the beach after them, and that is seconds before he tries swimming. There are two parts in the trailer though that I just don’t know why they spoiler it. The first part was when they showed the team running to the finish line. By showing that, you know whatever happens to anyone on the team, Arthur or the humans, they will all make it to the end. The other part was when Arthur puts his paw on Wahlberg’s arm at the vet. This is such an emotional thing, but I’ve seen the trailer a dozen times, so it means nothing to me when I actually see the movie. This movie could have been so good in my mind, but the trailer just ruined the movie for me.

Part Four – The Compromise

So after reading those first two parts, it really shouldn’t be a surprise how I think trailers should be created. To start, trailers shouldn’t exceed 75 seconds. That is more than enough time to give the premise, show the cast, maybe a small part of a couple scenes, and then call it a day. To be honest, most premises are a sentence long, so 75 seconds is generous. That brings me to my second rule. In a trailer, absolutely no part of the 2nd or 3rd act can be used for the trailer. The first act is more than enough. That act in a movie is used to set up the plot of the movie. So that should be good enough to promote the movie. That leaves 2/3 of the movie now to be revealed when people actually watch the movie.

I can hear some of you saying “you just described a teaser trailer”. Exactly. If we go to a point where we just tease movies and leave most of it for when people see the movie, it might just create more excitement to see movies again. Granted, in the dawn of the internet, the mystery of a movie will either be spoiled by leaks, or once a movie is released. Still, it shouldn’t be spoiled officially by the studio.

Part 5 – The Future

All of this is long way of saying that I am starting a new series on here talking about trailers. I’m not sure if it is weekly post or not, but it will be where I will talk about new trailers and what I think of them. I also don’t know if I will make a new pages for it either. I’ll just start with a post next week and see where it takes me.