Stop Watching Movie Trailers

July 26, 2016 10:02 AM

Chris Ryan of The Ringer wants us to stop watching movie trailers, because "They are broken, and they're ruining movies."

Let me spoil it for you:

There are no bad ideas in a brainstorm, except for the idea of putting more footage in trailers. Trailers want us to love movies. We want to love movies. Movies and people are one of the great love affairs of postindustrial American life. We are Rachel McAdams and movies are Ryan Gosling and we are running toward each other. We know how it’s going to work out in the end. Stop spoiling it for us.

posted by Etrigan (99 comments total)

Counterpoint: now I don’t have to watch movies.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 AM on July 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

But, but, the next post!

I am typically either watching a trailer for something OR the thing itself anymore, because the charm of immersion in a proper movie theater movie is all the stronger and more intoxicating without any prior knowledge. Trailers are always spoiling yourself just a little, so few of them employ any mystery, any allure.

But for something like T2, I know I'll give in.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:12 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

no, i won't and you can't make me, good day sir.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:12 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I miss surprise genre changes in films.
posted by ODiV at 10:13 AM on July 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

I remember Roger Ebert once compared certain movie trailers to samples of cheese: If you've had a small piece of cheese, you now know exactly what the cheese is like. You can decide whether or not you want more of it, but it will never surprise you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:14 AM on July 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Trailers are ruining comedies by including all the funny parts. Seth Rogen: Your movies are funny, and I don’t really need to pay to see them anymore because all the jokes are free in the four Neighbors 2 trailers.

The running time for Neighbors 2 is 92 minutes. If you can show all the funny parts in a comedy that last an hour and a half in less than 10 minutes, maybe it's not the trailer that's the problem.
posted by layceepee at 10:15 AM on July 26, 2016 [25 favorites]

I think the way trailers are done is usually the problem. Like when they show you the entire story linearly or they give away the ending blatantly or by hinting at it ("Shutter Island" and "Devil"). Why? Why would you do that? Why give away 80 or 90% of the plot?
posted by I-baLL at 10:17 AM on July 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Sorry I gotta get my fix of loud, staccato, distorted brass on one note.
posted by resurrexit at 10:18 AM on July 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

BBBWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMPPP
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:20 AM on July 26, 2016 [27 favorites]

A look at the future of cinema: it is a bimonthly curated box of snacks! Future trailers could then literally be samples of cheese.
posted by sapagan at 10:21 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm always baffeld by people who watch trailers for movies they already know they want to see. I would never watch a trailer for a David Mamet movie or a Michael Haneke movie or a Lem Dobbs movie. I know I'm going to see it! Why would I want to know what's going to happen in it?!

I only watch trailers for movies I have no connection to -- that I'm unsure of whether it'd be worth my time.

Fans of Spandex movies or Star Wars or whatever who get all frothy-jizzed at the announcement of a trailer are a bloody mystery to me. Comic Con nerds dressed as superheroes watching trailers for the next movie featuring that superhero? The bright is pretty dim there, me thinks.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:23 AM on July 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Counterpoint: Well-cut trailers are a fascinating (if less common than I'd like) thing of their own.

That and without trailers, I probably wouldn't end up watching *any* movies. How does "I will automatically watch this movie without knowing anything more than a title and maybe some actors involved" even work?
posted by CrystalDave at 10:27 AM on July 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

I do mutter "Oh, okay. Now I don't need to see the movie" a lot in cinemas. Like many, I dislike trailers that spoil plot points or basically summarize the story. And in cinemas where you're held prisoner for 15 minutes because you don't know when the damn film actually starts, it's especially annoying*.

I do very much like teaser trailers, however, and I'd love to be able to only see those.

* God bless England for outlawing this, btw.
posted by rokusan at 10:28 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'll say it again, in a husky baritone: it's time to bring trailer voiceovers back.
posted by Iridic at 10:29 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I would never watch a trailer for a David Mamet movie or a Michael Haneke movie or a Lem Dobbs movie. I know I'm going to see it!

There's your problem.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:29 AM on July 26, 2016

He's right. They are all too long now and some have spoilers. Watch the teaser trailer and the go see the movie.
posted by Webbster at 10:30 AM on July 26, 2016

If you can show all the funny parts in a comedy that last an hour and a half in less than 10 minutes, maybe it's not the trailer that's the problem.

That's not really fair. A while back I was looking for something to funny to watch on Netflix and came across Tucker and Tucker and Dale vs Evil which I had never heard of. I watched the trailer, which I really regretted, because while it didn't give away literally all of the jokes it did show all the major ones. And it gave away the entire conceit of the film that would have been a lot funnier if I didn't already know it going in.

I liked the movie but I really wished the trailer hadn't given so much away.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:30 AM on July 26, 2016

my issue is that I genuinely love movie trailers and have loved them for years, as their own little art form. that article's link to the a few good men trailer has the tag for movie-list, which was a website I frequented with great joy back when youtube wasn't the easiest way to find trailers for upcoming (or past) movies.

at their best, they're such an interesting distillation--like a tone poem or flash-fiction recreation of the full artifact, an exercise in concision and in maximization of emotional impact in the shortest space. hence the shortcuts like the inception BROOOOMMMM and the sad-classical-music-juxtaposed-against-slow-motion-action-sequence, but that stuff's effective (for me anyway) even in some of the lazier cases, and it can still be used to artful effect. I understand that 95% of the time, a trailer serves a purely mechanical purpose and is built as such, but the existence of 7000 Bejeweled clones doesn't negate the artistic potential of video games as a medium.

the OP article mentions the '79 alien trailer; I don't want to live in a world where that gem of building tension, claustrophobia, and fear isn't something I should watch.

but I said "issue" up top because that alien trailer is a real outlier in terms of evoking the mood and atmosphere of the movie without spoiling it. most of them really do, and I have felt like my enjoyment of movies (superhero ones in particular) is hurt by knowing all the set pieces and surprises well beforehand. I think trailer oversaturation has a lot to do with the ennui and general disappointment I and others have about the genre-ier genres of film.

anyway, I'm going to finish this up so I can go re-watch the new doctor strange trailer and get all worked up by mads doing some poorly-edited villain monologuing
posted by Kybard at 10:31 AM on July 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

How does "I will automatically watch this movie without knowing anything more than a title and maybe some actors involved" even work?

Lots of reasons:

You like the work it's based on
You like the director's previous works
You like the writer's previous works
You like the characters in it
You generally like that type of movie and know you'll probably end up seeing it

Your position is the one that doesn't really make sense. It's not like you encounter each new film in a complete vacuum of information and experience; you evaluate new movies you hear about based on what you like and know.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:33 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I flew to a Canada for a week of work back in the 90s, went to see Stargate purely based on the Sci-Fi-ish name, having seen no trailers, reviews, or any kind of publicity, as the film wasn't yet due for release in my home country at the time.

I enjoyed that film so much with zero foreknowledge that I resolved to never watch a trailer or read a review again, and to avoid as much information as possible about movies I would likely go and see. I close my eyes during trailers and sometimes put my fingers in my ears. Seeing movies fresh makes them twice as good.
posted by w0mbat at 10:36 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've mostly stopped watching trailers for anything but movies in which "spoiling the ending" isn't a thing. Like I don't really give a shit about, say, how the latest Marvel movie ends (they win! but then...) but on the other hand, I am super glad I didn't watch the Crimson Peak trailer before the movie because it gives away the fucking ending.

How does "I will automatically watch this movie without knowing anything more than a title and maybe some actors involved" even work?

Well, for example, I will automatically watch any Coen Brothers movie because they don't need to, like, seduce me to watch their films. I'm still seduced from before.
posted by griphus at 10:39 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Seeing movies fresh makes them twice as good.

I think a big reason that my favorite movie of all time is pan's labyrinth is that I walked into that movie almost totally blind, which let the movie entrance, horrify, delight, and devastate me entirely on its own terms. I can't say for sure seeing a trailer for it beforehand would have changed that, but it's reasonable to imagine so.
posted by Kybard at 10:43 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I kind of like to know when there's something interesting on the way and have an idea why it might be interesting, but yeah, there's an awful lot of trailers these days that are basically just a condensed version of the entire movie. It's hard not to watch the trailer for, say, The Shallows and come away saying "why the fuck would I want to see that now?".
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on July 26, 2016

Shouldn't a well-constructed trailer work like the summary on the back of a novel? Or the longer description on the inside front flap of the dust cover of a hardback book? Or like commercials to try get you to tune in to a show you've never watched? Good grief, The New Yorker (among others) publishes excerpts of forthcoming novels as "short stories". The movie industry is hardly alone in this.

I realize that not every trailed is well-constructed, but they're frequently not artless. And presumably the studios that release these trailers have done some work to determine if their trailer entices a want to watch. As a researcher who studies spoilers (shameless self-link), I'd love to get my hands on some of the likely-proprietary research done in the industry.
posted by anaphoric at 10:45 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm always baffeld by people who watch trailers for movies they already know they want to see...Fans of Spandex movies or Star Wars or whatever who get all frothy-jizzed at the announcement of a trailer are a bloody mystery to me.

Because sometimes, when you are looking forward to a thing, getting a taste of that thing can really be fun! It's like stealing a fingerful of frosting from a birthday cake. And sometimes, it turns out that the cake is actually horrid and soggy but at least you had that time to savour the frosting. And sometimes, the cake is outstanding, better than the frosting even and the fact that you tasted it doesn't take away from the full slice.

The bright is pretty dim there, me thinks.

And may it never shine at all upon those people who enjoy things the wrong way.
posted by sparklemotion at 10:45 AM on July 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Counterpoint: I probably would not have gone to see Wonder Woman, because I have been completely uninterested by the rest of DC's recent GrimOrangeTeal movies, but now that I've seen the trailer, I WANT TO FUCKING SEE THAT MOVIE!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:48 AM on July 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

The Cabin in the Woods trailer was great because it gave away nothing despite showing clips from the very end of the movie. When I watched the movie, I remember gasping and thinking "THAT'S what that was."
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:48 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's not like you encounter each new film in a complete vacuum of information and experience; you evaluate new movies you hear about based on what you like and know.
Oh, sure, but there's enough unpredictability out there in "Oh, hey, this director's done interesting stuff, but also terrible stuff" that makes "I don't know much about this movie but I'm going to go out of my way to see it" usually take more enthusiasm than walking in blinded produces.

Useful example: Two of the most recent movies I saw in theaters: Mad Max: Fury Road, and Godzilla. Knowing the directors & genre helped, but the thing which sold me on "This is something I might actually want to watch" was seeing the trailers. How does it look, how is it cut, does it look like the trailer exposes everything interesting about the film, etc.

If all I knew were "Another Mad Max film with the original director" and "Another Godzilla film, but by that guy who did an interesting low-budget alien-invasion movie", that wouldn't have been enough to make them worth watching. Take a look at the trailers linked, they're *stylish*. Bad trailers are bad, sure, but that's no reason to say "Get rid of trailers", that's a reason to say "Raise the bar on trailers".
posted by CrystalDave at 10:48 AM on July 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I want to be a grouchy old man about trailers — like, I'm the guy who's always "we don't have to rush there's gonna be like 15 minutes of trailers before the movie," to whom everyone else replies "I don't wannnaaa miss the trailers!" — but I just can't.

Like, okay, I completely understand the desire to seek out trailers for Star Wars and for Marvel Universe movies. Typically you can be pretty sure what sort of thing you're going to get from a Star Wars movie (or a Marvel movie), and if you like that sort of thing (I do!) it's very fun to get a quick condensed two minute flash of that sort of thing.

And yeah, trailers are totes a different art form than movies, an art form that's interesting in its own right.

The "these trailers spoil the entire movie" critique is, well, first, it's wrong, but second, it's wildly ahistorical. If you want to reliably see trailers that spoil the whole movie, your best bet isn't to watch contemporary trailers, it's to go to youtube and look up the trailers for like literally any movie from the 60s or 70s.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:59 AM on July 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I saw The Matrix reluctantly, because I thought it was going to be another Johnny Mnemonic. To this day I remember sitting in that theater, my eyebrows scrunching together in confusion, as I thought to myself "huh, that's kind of interesting actually," and then "wow, this is actually a pretty cool kung fu fight," and eventually "jesus, this is pretty damned fun!" I had NO IDEA what the movie was about, and that was SO. NICE.

I like movie trailers, but there are definitely two types. The trailer for The Lobster provided almost zero plot in favor of atmosphere. Based on that trailer I had no idea what it was about, but I knew I wanted to see it.

The trailer for Batman vs. Superman literally gave up every single major plot point (except whether the good guys actually won in the end which, c'mon). In a way I loved it because I knew I could skip that movie. There would be at most a half-interesting point or a couple of chuckle-worthy moments out of two hours.

This isn't a hard and fast rule, but generally I think it's easier to make a good, compelling, mostly-spoiler-free trailer out of a good movie. Bad movies have less riches from which to mine.
posted by nushustu at 11:06 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Animated film trailers have taken some cues from pixar's blooper reels by releasing ads that are essentially promo shorts. For reasons I'm not certain of I'm inclined to think that this wouldn't work for live action films, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:06 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Firstly, it is worth noting that for a large percentage of the population, films are unspoilable. There was a survey done in the 70s or 80s of audiences for Columbo, where halfway through the show they asked who was the murderer and a majority had no idea. Mind you, this was a show where the murder is shown in the first scene and the entire program is Columbo interviewing the murderer. There's just a percentage of the audience that can be shown huge spoilers and by the time the movie comes out they will have forgotten.

Secondly, it's very likely that a lot of people don't mind movies spoiled. I don't. The idea of spoilers comes from the idea that the pleasure of a movie is that it surprises you with plot points, but with a majority of movies made nowadays, you either are incapable of figuring out plot points or you have the entire movie figured out a minute into it. Movies are a popular art form, and popular arts rely on satisfying an audiences expectations, rather than defying them. Complaining that a popular film is predictable is like complaining that a pop song used the same three chords as every other pop song -- that's not a criticism, it's baked into the very structure. We do not see these films to be surprised by structure or plotting, but to be delighted by the way the familiar is rendered surprising and then returns to the familiar again, giving us the frisson of very brief uncertainty before we return to certainty, or of novel or humorous approaches to the familiar.

The distaste for spoilers represents the desires of a very small population of filmgoers who seemingly think every movie is an M Night Shyamalan piece that relies on unexpected plot twists. Well, as we've discovered, even M Night Shyamalan films can suck when all you have is the twist, and they can be perfectly enjoyable when there is no significant or surprising twist at all, as with The Visit, which has one major surprise that might have surprised a child but nobody else.
posted by maxsparber at 11:09 AM on July 26, 2016 [20 favorites]

In a time where
there were too many movies
and too many trailers,
one man dared to challenge them,
one man said to stop watching them.

That man
was Chris Ryan.

See him in
“Get Off My Lawn”,
coming soon to a theatre near you!
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:10 AM on July 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Here are some examples of great trailers that do what they're supposed to do--tell you that a movie exists and make you want to see it--without giving anything away.

Citizen Kane
She's Gotta Have It
And of course, The Shining, which might just be the best trailer ever made.

Granted, two of these three had the advantage of the reputations of the people involved. Which is why She's Gotta Have It is instructive. It sold the movie by introducing the world to Spike Lee himself, which was certainly better for his career in the long run.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:10 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Good grief, The New Yorker (among others) publishes excerpts of forthcoming novels as "short stories". The movie industry is hardly alone in this.

More analogous to a clip, surely?

I'm actually quite fond of the subtype of trailer that's mostly built around a longish clip.
posted by Artw at 11:11 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

The distaste for spoilers represents the desires of a very small population of filmgoers who seemingly think every movie is an M Night Shyamalan piece that relies on unexpected plot twists.

But I think The Sixth Sense is a pretty great example of what's wrong with trailers. That movie is supposed to have two big twists in it. Imagine watching the movie without knowing that the kid sees dead people. The first act of it would have been a lot more interesting.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:13 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Way too much importance is placed on the ending of movies.
posted by davebush at 11:16 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm in a distinct minority, I know, because I do not care one whit about being spoiled for movies. I love to watch movies (and plays and read books) for the whole experience, not just to be surprised at every turn the plot takes us. It's okay to know where a story goes, I think, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching how a story where I know how it ends is laid out to the audience.
posted by xingcat at 11:18 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Way too much importance is placed on the ending of movies.

I love to watch movies (and plays and read books) for the whole experience, not just to be surprised at every turn the plot takes us. It's okay to know where a story goes, I think, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching how a story where I know how it ends is laid out to the audience.

Then conversely, shouldn't a trailer focus more on giving you a flavor of the movie, rather than following the standard trailer formula? I'd argue that the three trailers I linked above give you more of an idea of what the movies feel like than standard trailers do.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:24 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Do you know how many films are released each year today? No? ....Either do I but I'm sure its a lot. .... If I don't watch trailers how am I going to know which ones to bother watching?
posted by mary8nne at 11:24 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've just faced the fact. We are living in a Philip Dick world. We are just a tic away from having tiny drones target us personally and deliver an annoying ad in our ear.

Trailers? Super annoying. But, (and please read this in Bernadette Peter's voice as she delivers the line in "The Jerk": "I don't care about losing all the money. It's losing all the stuff") *ehem . . . If I don't get to the theater early enough how do I get My Seat?
posted by Euphorbia at 11:30 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Count me in the anti trailer camp. I don't like having my food pre-masticated either.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 11:30 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

two of these three had the advantage of the reputations of the people involved

Despite what Orson Welles is trying to get you to think in that trailer, Citizen Kane did not have some kind of all-star cast, and it was his own first movie. If you look at the posters ("It's Terrific!"), you can see that the studio had no idea at all how to promote the film.

Film is its own art form; it can't effectively be reduced to a written description or a handful of screenshots. Of course if you're going to offer a representative taste of it, it needs to be...actual footage, artfully-edited together. What else could it be? The number of films, especially genuinely ambitious films, whose effect truly depends on your going in ignorant of everything about them is vanishingly small.

(And genre films are intended to be predictable, so I'm not really sure I see the point of complaining that their trailers reveal the plot elements you already know are going to be in the film anyway.)
posted by praemunire at 11:41 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The idea of spoilers comes from the idea that the pleasure of a movie is that it surprises you with plot points, but with a majority of movies made nowadays, you either are incapable of figuring out plot points or you have the entire movie figured out a minute into it.

This, really. It's extraordinarily rare that any movie comes close to surprising me by a plot device. I can be surprised and delighted by scenery or effects pretty easily. I can enjoy dialogue and character development. But plotting, vanishingly rarely.

I'm not some stupendous intellect either, movie plots are so broad and obvious that they are pretty much pre-spoiled. The girl will get the guy, the good guys will give the baddies a good thumping, the jerk will get a meaningful life lesson and resolve to be a better person. That's almost never in doubt. Hollywood almost never does a real tragedy (and when it does it's usually telegraphed as well).
posted by bonehead at 11:43 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

But if they stopped making trailers, how could we then recut those trailers.
Like this.
Or like this.
Or, of course, like this.
posted by Naberius at 11:49 AM on July 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

My attitude is if I have no intention of watching a movie or I need to know about a film for something work related & I don't have time to watch a film I will watch the trailer. If I want to watch the film, I never watch it before but I will sometimes watch the trailer afterwards in order to get a sense of how the film is being marketed. Hilariously, my business partner watches every trailer he can get his hands on even if it spoils a movie for him (which really bugs him). Nothing spoils a movie for me. That being said I do have some trailers I like more than the films they advertise... Off the top of my head I think the trailers for Stunt Rock, Color Me Blood Red and Eat My Dust are likely near the top.

There's a fine art to cutting a trailer that the current committee led marketing of studios has all but killed. Have look at the trailer of Psycho or Citizen Kane those are by their respective filmmakers. Or you can have a slightly different take where the trailers actively misrepresent their films, check out some of the classic Roger Corman trailers (often cut by Joe Dante) which feature added explosions or stunts in the films by adding explosions.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:52 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Original trailer for Buffalo '66, which had me very keen to see the film.

Buffalo '66 Blu-ray trailer, which I suspect the director hates as much as I do.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 11:54 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'd rather watch a dozen "broken" trailers than have to read an article with the line "That's the whole movie, dog. Seriously."

This dude says trailers may have "peaked." Maybe so, but there's no denying that the trailer is an art form unto itself.

The Big Heat trailer being a prime example of the best of the best of its kind.
posted by blucevalo at 11:55 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I haven't watched a trailer (outside of a theater, where I am held captive) for probably a year or two now--I suppose one or two must've snuck in during a Superbowl viewing or something, but none that I can remember. It's part of an overall disengagement with The Hype Train. I don't read interviews with stars, don't watch The Making Of, don't really consume any metaproduct, just the product itself. Since going this route, I generally enjoy what I enjoy more, and feel less disgusted and let down by what isn't as enjoyable. I am still no more surprised by plot or performance than I was before--all the interesting bits seem to have been focused grouped out of existence in most modern films.

I do watch far fewer movies now than I used to, but that's not just due to lack of hype--it's also due to far more options for how to spend my free time, and a generalized overtiredness with the same stories retold in different spandex colorways. There is a limited number of tropes that can make it into mainstream film these days, and once you've seen one David Fincher film, for instance, you know what you're in for from any other--a twist that also engages with some easily-predicted transgressive turf. The same is true for any genre. It feels like the variety of films available has narrowed as investment in high-stakes blockbusters built on power fantasies that are aimed at tweens have absorbed such an enormous amount of our culture's attention.

Upon reflection, maybe movies just suck a lot more right now and deboarding from the Hype Train is just a symptom of disengaging from the whole shoddy apparatus.
posted by turntraitor at 11:55 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Grammar rant: what's with this use of "broken"? It really seemed to get popular over the current president's tenure (e.g. congress is broken!!) and seems to be nothing more than a fussy way of saying "could be improved". I think its bad. Thank you.
posted by stinkfoot at 12:06 PM on July 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't care about having movies spoiled. They aren't spoiled for me. I like trailers, though (like most video online) I really don't have time to watch them on my computer or phone, so I mostly see them in theaters, where they take up to fifteen minutes and a good third of my popcorn. That's all right with me. I have seen many, many movies when I even knew the ending, and enjoyed them all. I have re-read books, too.

There are only a handful of plots. Plot is not the point of a story, as the skeleton is not the point of a human being. You have to have it, or it's unsatisfying, but it's not what makes a story engrossing, whether it's a movie, a play, a novel, or a short story. That's all in the details and the development. The shock of a plot working itself out properly is satisfying even when you know what the bones are.
posted by Peach at 12:07 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's just a percentage of the audience that can be shown huge spoilers and by the time the movie comes out they will have forgotten.

These must be the same people who tell me to turn off my brain before entering the theater. How do they remember to breathe?
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:08 PM on July 26, 2016

These must be the same people who tell me to turn off my brain before entering the theater. How do they remember to breathe?

People enjoy movies differently from each other. It would be nice if everyone would beanplate a movie as much as I do, because then I would have more people to talk to, but a lot of people don't derive pleasure from that, and they get to enjoy movies however they want.
posted by maxsparber at 12:14 PM on July 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

If I don't watch trailers how am I going to know which ones to bother watching?

I do a mix of the following:

-Keep an eye out for new projects from certain directors, writers, even a few actors who have consistently chosen interesting roles. I won't necessarily watch every movie from these people, but I'll take a closer look if they're involved. This is also possible (for me, anyways) with certain studios/production companies.

-I have a few movie reviewers I've come to trust. Generally they do a great job of breaking down different aspects while giving a minimal plot overview, ie. about the same as you would get from a blurb on the back cover of a novel - just enough to set the scene from which the movie will jump off.

-Keep an eye on (and attend when possible) film festivals. Festival schedules/brochures/websites always compress the plot summary into a sentence or three.

I mean, for sure it's easier just to go to youtube and watch trailers, but I'm a pretty big movie addict and I find it's worth putting in this effort. I'm enjoying most good movies on a whole extra level now that they're virtually all 99% fresh for me.
posted by mannequito at 12:23 PM on July 26, 2016

Grammar rant: what's with this use of "broken"? It really seemed to get popular over the current president's tenure (e.g. congress is broken!!) and seems to be nothing more than a fussy way of saying "could be improved". I think its bad. Thank you.

I think this is something that's come about because the way we think of and use grammar is...






I'll let myself out...
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:26 PM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

*mumble-mumble * Clearly, I am much older than everyone on Metafilter, because what I consider the perfect trailer is those glossy 8.5 x 11 (sometimes only in black and white) stills that you could look at in their little frames outside of the movie theatre before you lined up to buy your ticket. That was how you decided if you wanted to see the movie or not, and if you happened to be broke you would go past the theatre repeatedly for the week or two that the movie was showing, to stare wistfully at the picture and speculate what might be happening.

This theatre has three such pictures outside although they are in one big frame. If you knew someone who worked at the theatre they might even give you one of the stills to take home, but generally they were shipped off to the next theatre that was going to show the movie, along with the reel of film. Apparently sometimes people had those pictures autographed by the actor but I believe that was only people who lived in California, and I'm not sure why they would have wanted the autographed version.

Of course you didn't just go by the pictures outside the theatre. The newspaper had a page that showed what was on at all the different movie cinemas, and each ad was basically the movie poster, so you could try to make up your mind from just the one picture of say, a man in an Arabic headdress, a train, a camel, and a woman with a low decolletage. There might even be a tag line on the poster "The desert keeps all secrets..." or "One night that will change everything" but more often there wasn't, as the seven or so actors who got billing on the poster had names that took up all the available space.

Since movies came out in major cities before they were run in minor ones, like Montreal, they had likely been released about six weeks ago, which meant that people who knew things would know all about them. I dunno how people knew those things, but I think it was because they worked with someone who had a cousin in New York who had described the plot in a handwritten letter.

This meant that there weren't seasonal movies the way they have them nowadays. I think we saw "The Lion in Winter" in April. Also, as going to the movies cost a lot, it wasn't something you did more than four times a year or so - another reason for wistfully trying to guess what was going on the picture where the lady in the evening gown appeared to have just slapped the man in the hussar's uniform - my parents were quite choosy about which movies one might be taken to see. If a movie were educational it had a better chance than one that was purely entertainment, with the result that historical costume dramas usually won. Westerns didn't count as historical costume dramas because people still wore cowboy hats, but European history was a clear winner.

From the age of five or so my sisters and I understood the agony of staying true to one's understanding of one's faith and the tiny dogmatic questions that were blasphemy and treason to admit (A Man for All Seasons) even if we had not yet actually figured out if we were actually Christians or not. (We were Protestants in an area where Protestant was defined as "not Catholic" so a number of my Protestant friends were Jewish, and although my family was Atheist some of us kids had been baptized as that was the most expedient way to get a birth certificate.)

Trailers are not a bad way to decide if I want to see a movie or not, as they generally show the most dramatic special effects, and as special effects annoy me they will reliably indicate if the special effects component is insufferable or not.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:38 PM on July 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

How does "I will automatically watch this movie without knowing anything more than a title and maybe some actors involved" even work?

I know for some its actors. I don't even want to know the actors. For me it's writers and directors. I'll see the latest Coen, Allen, Innaritu, Anderson (either), Fincher etc film on spec, and enjoy the surprise of knowing next to nothing about it whenever possible. They're not always great (because everyone has bad efforts) but the success rate is pretty high.

I mean, don't you buy the new books from your favorite authors? Do you read reviews or snippets first?
posted by rokusan at 12:40 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Comic Con nerds dressed as superheroes watching trailers for the next movie featuring that superhero? The bright is pretty dim there, me thinks.

It's no stupider a pastime than people who wear athletic jerseys to the stadium and then tailgate before the game. You're going to go watch the athlete play in an hour, why are you dressed up like him?! /s
posted by Autumnheart at 12:41 PM on July 26, 2016 [10 favorites]

But if they stopped making trailers, how could we then recut those trailers.

Also: Scary Mary
posted by alasdair at 12:42 PM on July 26, 2016

I find the trailers to be perfectly acceptable substitutes for the movies in most cases.

I find The Theater-Going Experience to be detestable, so if I'm going to see a movie, it'll be when it shows up on the streaming services. And by the time it gets there, I will usually have seen not only the trailers, but all the best scenes, in three-minute YouTube clips. If I STILL want to see it after all that, I know I'm REALLY interested.

>Comic Con nerds dressed as superheroes watching trailers for the next movie featuring that superhero? The bright is pretty dim there, me thinks.

Yeah, how stupid of them to enjoy a thing that they enjoy in the way that they want to. Let us mock them.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:43 PM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I do my best to avoid knowing too much about a movie before I watch it. It's a tricky thing sometimes finding just enough information to know I want to see it but no more. So it does annoy me when it's a trailer in a theater where I can't easily cut it off. (Or, remember unskippable trailers on DVDs? Those sucked in about 900 different ways, only one of which was the spoilers.)

Sometimes I know right away that I'm going to see something. Usually because of the director, sometimes based on critical buzz, and sometimes I just decide to take a chance on something based on a brief initial hook or even something like a title card or blurb on a streaming service (where there is admittedly a much lower bar for decision making). I also follow some people on Letterboxd who seem to like the same kinds of things I like and watch other movies they like. There are lots of ways to find movies to watch without even resorting to trailers at all.

The perfect trailer for me is one that gives an idea of the aesthetic, the pacing, and the general mood of a movie without going too much into specific plot points. BUT--and I do have a really big but--plot tends to be relatively unimportant to me. I don't watch movies to watch a specific sequence of concrete events, and a lot of my favorite movies are relatively uneventful in terms of major, concrete events. I still don't really like having those events spoiled more than absolutely necessary, though. I like to watch a story play out as intended, in context, with the pacing intact.

But there are a lot of things about fan cultures that I just can't relate to, so I don't know if that's a format that'd work for those audiences. I know people who are really really into things like trailers and leaks and announcements and mashups and things like that that have almost no appeal to me personally, so I recognize that my personal preferences are going to be pretty different from theirs.

(It does seem to me that people aren't as bothered by spoilers of superhero franchise movies as they are for other movies. I'm not interested in those at all, but I often know about major plot points by osmosis or something before or shortly after they're released.)
posted by ernielundquist at 12:46 PM on July 26, 2016

I like trailers, they're fun! They're also a good way to judge whether I'm going to want to sit through 2 hours of a movie. Movies are also expensive these days and I don't have the guts to ask for my money back if I don't enjoy one (does that actually work?)

But I may not be the target market for this criticism. The majority of movies I see these days are at second run theaters ($4 tickets, and beers!) although I've been meaning to make more of a point to see newer releases and great re-releases at places like Hollywood Theater in Portland.
posted by gucci mane at 12:46 PM on July 26, 2016

The idea of spoilers comes from the idea that the pleasure of a movie is that it surprises you with plot points, but with a majority of movies made nowadays, you either are incapable of figuring out plot points or you have the entire movie figured out a minute into it.

I really hope this isn't the case and that we're giving ourselves credit for things we've gleaned from promotional material that tells us everything. To reuse an example I often bring up on MeFi: Not knowing a damn thing about The Matrix except that it was a sci-fi movie starring Keanu Reeves, there was no way for me to know what the entire movie was a minute into it, and that was awesome.

The distaste for spoilers represents the desires of a very small population of filmgoers who seemingly think every movie is an M Night Shyamalan piece that relies on unexpected plot twists.

I don't care much about plot twists. What about plot in general? Or the other aspects of the film? How often do you get to watch a film knowing next to nothing about it, including the actors, tone, setting, and even genre? It's super hard to avoid this stuff nowadays, but worth it for me when I can manage it. Obviously everyone's experience can and is different (as evidenced here!), but I suggest you try this if you can.
posted by ODiV at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, don't you buy the new books from your favorite authors? Do you read reviews or snippets first?

Heck yeah, I read reviews or snippets first. Books are expensive. I'm terribly fond of my favorite authors, but I can still admit that not everything they write is to my taste. If I'm plunking down $13 for a book, you bet your ass I'm going to research it first to see if I'll get my money's worth out of it.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2016

Many times the trailer is made before the movie is finalized and in the can. So, the editors use what footage is available at the time, which can often include alternate takes, shots, and gags that don't make it to the final cut,
posted by Thorzdad at 12:49 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Despite what Orson Welles is trying to get you to think in that trailer, Citizen Kane did not have some kind of all-star cast, and it was his own first movie. If you look at the posters ("It's Terrific!"), you can see that the studio had no idea at all how to promote the film.

I'd thought that most people knew him from radio, or at least knew his voice (hence his voice playing such a prominent role in the trailer). Point taken, though.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:51 PM on July 26, 2016

I watch movies almost entirely based on reputation (the Internet provides plenty of polls from all kinds of different communities ... be it prof critics, audiences, or fansites for more specific genres), not on the specific details of the movie. So I go in knowing next to nothing about the plot of almost all the movies I watch.

It might seem riskier, but actually it's a lot less. The ratio of failed investments is way lower if you just submit to the judgment of properly identified peers.
posted by dgaicun at 12:56 PM on July 26, 2016

The trick with trailers is to watch one, maybe two, and only watch them once. A trailer is supposed to give you a hint, get you excited and that's it. Move on, there's zero need to read every damn post on in the Nerd Circuit to find every last detail about a movie.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:57 PM on July 26, 2016

As a parent of 2 who has seen maybe 2 movies in one sitting (both on Netflix) in the 4 years since the first baby was born -- I really, really like trailers. Even the ones that give away lots of the plot. If I am going to invest 2 hours of my time into something, I want to know that it will be worth it. I also like feeling a bit connected to the culture that I do not have time to participate in, and 3 min movie trailers are usually enough to participate in water cooler conversation. I am also a person who read episode synopses of GOT before deciding whether to watch the whole episode or just catch you tube clips, so maybe I am in the minority as far as my media consumption habits go.

Since I just don't have the time to consume every movie that comes out, I like to be an informed consumer. A good trailer can help me guess whether a given movie is likely to be truly excellent, and any truly excellent movie always has more to offer than its trailer -- no matter how much the trailer gives away.
posted by cubby at 1:07 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Way too much importance is placed on the ending of movies.

I would much rather be mildly surprised by the entire movie than have just one OMG TWIST! surprise at the end.

I'm pretty sure I've had more total enjoyment from feelings of "What's going on? Who is this? Where are we?" at the beginning of movies that I didn't know much about than I have from satisfaction at the climax of movies with good endings.
posted by straight at 1:10 PM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Great trailers are as rare and as special as great things in any medium.

For me and my life experiences, watching the trailer for The Social Network with the choral rendition of Creep underscored is enough to knock me over. I come back to it once in a while and it's always the same devastating emotion.

I've had similar experiences with half a dozen other trailers. And none of those great trailers ruined their respective films.

But most trailers are dumb reductions of the Platonic ideal and I hate them. They just make me feel gross.
posted by an animate objects at 1:16 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also most movies are bad. They are all made by the same two dozen white guys and I can't even anymore.
posted by an animate objects at 1:17 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

He says nobody wants to be "prepared" for a movie. Well, I kind of do. If I know going in what the overall tone of a movie is going to be like, I get immersed much more quickly and easily, because I can just let myself slip right into it.

I get how this is less important for a movie like Suicide Squad, because you can pretty much tell what it's going to be like from the poster, but I'm glad that I went to The Lobster knowing that it wasn't going to be a lolololol kind of comedy.
posted by ostro at 1:20 PM on July 26, 2016

So there are all these trailers interspersed with the text of this article about Why You Shouldn't Watch Trailers, and I watched the one for Doctor Strange, and now I want to see it. Was I supposed to watch the trailers in the middle of this article about why I shouldn't watch trailers? I now know that this movie exists, and it has some really cool effects shots, and the "white man travels to the mystic east" narrative hasn't changed from the comics.

I dunno, I'm not one of those people who seeks out trailers, I really don't watch that many movies any more in general.
posted by egypturnash at 1:29 PM on July 26, 2016

Metafilter: Dumb reductions of the Platonic ideal
posted by Chitownfats at 1:37 PM on July 26, 2016

I just watched Jean-Pierre Melville's remarkable Army of Shadows this weekend, having wanted to see it since...I saw the trailer for the 2006 U.S. release at Film Forum maybe a year and a half ago. This trailer technically betrays one plot point: the death early in the film of a character. In the scene where he dies, it's not at all clear that the killers are going to manage it, or how, and that definitely contributes to the tension. So, technically, if you remember that image (and it is vivid), I suppose the impact of the scene might be lessened. (I had forgotten it, given the time lapse.) But doesn't the trailer evoke a mood and, if you're susceptible to that kind of mood, make you want to see the film? It stuck in my head for over a year.
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on July 26, 2016

I love trailers but don't care for most movies (not out of some high brow commitment to art, mostly because my movie taste is terrible and juvenile, and I lose patience with movies after an hour). Captain America Civil War did me so wrong; they used completely different takes in the movie, and after having watched the trailers a bazillion times, it was super jarring and disappointing when the scenes in the movie used worse takes than what was in the trailer. Misleading me about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes is a grave sin, Marvel.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 1:47 PM on July 26, 2016

Captain America Civil War did me so wrong

IIRC, though, the trailer did not betray the most important emotional point (you know, the thing with the Starks). That was actually something a viewer benefited from not knowing whether it was going to come to pass; you start worrying at the beginning (or I guess before the beginning if you read a lot of fan speculation) and then at a certain point you think, Oh, dammit, it's going to play out that way, crap crap crap. I don't know whether that was a choice made out of competence or out of the lack of explosions involved in the reveal, though.
posted by praemunire at 2:00 PM on July 26, 2016

I've started doing this thing where I'll watch the trailer for a movie AFTER seeing the whole movie, especially if it's a movie I enjoyed. Often as people have said, there's different takes, or scenes that weren't in the actual film, or a tone that's totally foreign to what I just watched. It's interesting.
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 2:09 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the case of superhero movies, there's not generally much to spoil, but if you know the source material, it can tell you what take the direction/writing is going to take. For example, I saw the trailer for Man of Steel, and thought "that character bears no resemblance whatsoever to Superman," and waited for a cheap matinee, and was glad I did not waste full price on it.

I have a trailer rating process that runs like this:
1] See it opening night/weekend (preferably surrounded by other enthusiastic fans)
2] Catch it in the theaters
3] Wait for it to turn up on cable or streaming
4] Eh, maybe if someone else is watching it, or there's really not anything else on
5] Not. If. You. Paid. Me

Trailers are often useful for helping me stay far away from Category 5's, figuring out if the effects are going to be fancy enough to move a film into Category 2 (e.g. Avatar, which is just another What These People Need Is A Honky film on a small screen) and sometimes, as in the case of DC's most recent live action movies, warning to bump a much anticipated film out of Category 1.

Granted, one trailer (if there are multiples, usually the second or third) is enough to categorize. There's no need to watch every variant trailer, spoiler clip, and etc. Either I'm going to see the movie, and I'll see it then, or I won't, and I have no interest.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:20 PM on July 26, 2016

But what I can think critically, can I watch trailers then?

I've seen trailers that enticed me to go see the movie and then the movie sucked. That happens a couple of times and a person starts to learn something.

Trailers give me an impression of what the movie is going to feel like but that's not the only thing that goes into my calculus when deciding if I'm going to go see a movie.

I thought the Batman vs. Superman trailer looked cool but, having seen Man of Steel I wasn't about to see it in the theater unless some reviews came out with favorable impressions.

I watched the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy and once I the first one and then noticed that Chris Pratt was in it, I was sold. Frankly, after liking every MCU movie that had come out up to that point, I was ready to hand over a giant stack of cash to go see every MCU movie that will ever be released.

That said, if a movie impresses me that much, I'll purposefully deprive myself of other information until after I've seen the movie so as not to form any expectations going in.
posted by VTX at 3:00 PM on July 26, 2016

I love trailers but only the atmosphere ones & I hate spoilers. I can watch something if I know what happens & appreciate other stuff but I like getting the suspense of the first watch and then the appreciation of later watches if it's good. Otherwise a spoiled watch of a bad movie has nothing.
posted by dame at 3:17 PM on July 26, 2016

This is how you do a goddamn trailer, showing everything, spoiling nothing and making my HEART BEAT FASTER SO I WANT TO WATCH THE GODDDAMN MOVIE.

(Watch with the sound up nice and high)
posted by lalochezia at 3:27 PM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: Captain America Civil War did me so wrong
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:50 PM on July 26, 2016

This is how you do a goddamn trailer...

Yes, a minute long commercial that doesn't answer any need or want I have!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:52 PM on July 26, 2016

I thought The Witch had an unusually good trailer. It revealed only one major plot point which was the catalyst that sets the events of the film in motion. The rest was just a cascade of tense and haunting imagery that gave you a sense of what kind of experience you were in for.
posted by treepour at 4:36 PM on July 26, 2016

It's really not about spoilers per se. It's the expectations that are set.

Trailers are ads, and ads are brainwashing. It's real low-grade stuff, sure, but still brainwashing.

So the trailer is meant to sell. It may or may not have any relation to the product being sold. All that matters to the trailer is if those that watch it pony up the money later.

I'd personally rather engage as directly with the artists as is possible, and that means avoiding trailers, ads masked as reviews, and fan sites.

I love reviews that are actual critiques, and the better ones require already being familiar with the material. They more resemble the sort of thing seen in humanities classes.

I'd much rather trailers were the first few minutes of the movie. Just like when considering a book purchase, reading the first couple of pages is a much better indicator of the contents than any of the marketing copy on the cover.

All in all, it's just more eating the corn seed behavior that seems increasingly common in US culture. The really good stuff happens on the margins. It's not that popular material can't be good, it's that good stuff can't be engineered. Anytime I come across good pop, it's like a happy accident.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 4:57 PM on July 26, 2016

maxsparber: "People enjoy movies differently from each other."

I feel like MetaFilter should have some sort of basic AI built in that detects when a person is writing about art, entertainment, food, or other aesthetic things and automatically posts "People enjoy {aesthetic thing} differently from each other" as the first comment.

Twists often take me by surprise. I also enjoy being surprised (not jump scare surprised, but plot twist surprised). I enjoyed the Sixth Sense and Interstellar and The Others and Scanner Darkly and lots of other movies with twists or "ah-ha" moments.
Even if I enjoy a movie, even if I love a movie, I can almost never stand to rewatch it. The second go-round, for me, is boring. There are exceptions, of course, but it's not really linked to how much I enjoyed the movie. When I know everything that's going to happen, I personally get bored.

Not everyone is like me. That's okay! For lots of people movies can't be spoiled because they don't care about twists. That's fine! But it does get annoying to constantly be told that my dislike of spoilers comes from me being too dumb to predict twists, or enjoying movies which are inferior because they have twists, or enjoying movies in the wrong way, because I should be enjoying them even if spoiled.

If you hate spoilers, go ahead, hate spoilers! It doesn't make you an idiot or a jerk.
If you like spoilers, go ahead, like spoilers! It doesn't make you an idiot or a jerk.
If you don't care about spoilers, go ahead, don't care about spoilers! It doesn't make you an idiot or a jerk.

But if you feel like casting aspersions on people who have a different take on spoilers, shut up. You're the jerk in that scenario.
posted by Bugbread at 5:13 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a person who likes to be surprised, I am very happy with this whole "teaser" thing that has become so popular in the last...decade, perhaps? Teasers are wonderful for conveying look and feel without giving away anything else.

Also, it is fun seeing TV commercials for Western movies here in Japan. The full-length trailers shown before films are the same as the US trailers, just with subtitles, but the 30 second TV commercials are tailored to the Japanese market, and apparently what gets butts in seats are tearjerkers about family love. Thus the TV commercial for Interstellar cast it as a sci-fi tearjerker about an astronaut's love for his daughter and his struggle to come back to her, the TV commercial for World War Z cast it as an action tearjerker about a husband separated from his family by a plague and his struggle to get back to them, etc., etc.

(Also, because zombie films don't do well in Japan, the commercials completely hid the fact that WWZ was a zombie movie, which produced a lot of pissed-off movie viewers)
posted by Bugbread at 5:31 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

> I feel like MetaFilter should have some sort of basic AI built in that detects when a person is writing about art, entertainment, food, or other aesthetic things and automatically posts "People enjoy {aesthetic thing} differently from each other" as the first comment.

okay but also can we still look down our noses at people who act as if plot is the only important thing about a movie? like I'm phrasing this sort of lightheartedly and snarkily, but nevertheless I do think that there's this nerdboy tendency to reduce storytelling in all media to the plot, and often people holding this tendency are super dismissive of people who relate to movies primarily as spectacle, and I think this tendency is actually something that it's almost like politically important to call out.

spectacle is awesome. plot spoilers don't kill movies. if the only thing that mattered about movies were the plot, no one would need to go see movies. we'd just stay at home and read Russian Formalist taxonomies of narrative structure.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:34 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a person who likes to be surprised, I am very happy with this whole "teaser" thing that has become so popular in the last...decade, perhaps? Teasers are wonderful for conveying look and feel without giving away anything else.

Then it went too far and we got the teaser for the teaser.
posted by Artw at 5:54 PM on July 26, 2016

Metafilter: just stay at home and read Russian Formalist taxonomies of narrative structure.
posted by sammyo at 5:57 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

A year or two ago I went to some mid-range blockbuster early in the year and the trailers were just fantastic. An expansive feel in large dramatic worlds, seemed like it'd be a great film year, nope. Just nope, most ended up feeling mostly mediocre. Perhaps the studios should swap roles, give the trailers to the big time directors and the trailer directors full directing gigs? (I know that's not how it works, but maybe it should).
posted by sammyo at 6:02 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

You Can't Tip a Buick: "okay but also can we still look down our noses at people who act as if plot is the only important thing about a movie?"

Yes, we can do that. If they talk about it as if it is the only important thing to them, then that's fine, but if they frame it as some sort of absolute, not just their own tastes, we can totally look down on them.

You Can't Tip a Buick: "spectacle is awesome. plot spoilers don't kill movies."

Aw, man, and you started so well! This is what I was trying to get at. If spoilers don't spoil movies for you, that's great! But don't just assert that they don't kill movies as some sort of universal absolute. They do kill movies for some people. They don't kill movies for others. This does not reflect an intellectual or aesthetic deficiency in either camp.
posted by Bugbread at 6:24 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

but at least you had that time to savour the frosting

I was thinking of Prometheus even as I was clicking that link. If there's a film with a higher full trailer/actual film ratio I'm not sure of one.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:31 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

How does "I will automatically watch this movie without knowing anything more than a title and maybe some actors involved" even work?

In addition to the ways Sangermaine listed, there's "it was reviewed well in a good venue". The positive reviews at Reverse Shot are better at making me want to see a movie than the great, great majority of trailers.
posted by kenko at 6:31 PM on July 26, 2016

Metafilter: can we still look down our noses at people who act as if plot is the only important thing about a movie?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:59 PM on July 26, 2016

This is how you do a goddamn trailer, showing everything, spoiling nothing and making my HEART BEAT FASTER SO I WANT TO WATCH THE GODDDAMN MOVIE.

Using David Fincher is cheating. He's been making the best trailers for years. See also, The Fight Club PSAs and The Game teaser.
posted by fullerine at 11:27 PM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fincher has also consistently had the best opening credit sequences in his films imo. I wonder if it's the same people making both.
posted by mannequito at 1:15 AM on July 28, 2016