Trailer Trash

By: Reach for the Sky

I really hate movie trailers. They seem to completely disregard the context of the movie. The people who edit these have one thing in mind: sell the movie. This may mean spoiling crucial plot points, throwing out (and subsequently ruining) the film's best jokes, or completely misrepresenting the movie in question. Never mind that this may harm movie sales in the long run, we need to make sure the audience knows every detail of the plot three months before it comes out.

I don't know how many romantic subplots have been spoiled by those sleazy sex/make-out teasers they throw in trailers to let the audience know that, yes, there will be skin-rubbing at some point in this film*. Many times the audience will know what characters will survive certain situations because there are scenes in the trailer that haven't been shown in the film yet. Is there really any need to show the content of the last 45 minutes of the movie at all? Notice how little anyone actually knows about Inception based on the trailer? Notice how everyone wants to see Inception?

Here is a link to the most popular trailer of Inglourious Basterds. Now the movie was great, but the trailer gives a completely wrong impression of the movie. One character that was omitted from that trailer is Shosanna, which is odd considering half the movie is dedicated to her story. This was clearly an act to fool action fans into thinking it was all about the soldiers and their antics (Which, in my opinion, would have made the movie much better). The trailer for The Book of Eli gave the impression that it was going to be a dumbed down action flick, when in fact it had an interesting story filled with biblical parallels (Interestingly enough, Legion had the opposite problem, but I don't blame them for not wanting to honestly represent it.)

Trailers are supposed to be a form of advertising, but you can hype a movie without giving away hug portions of the plot or spoiling the best parts. District 9 did this well and Inception is doing it now. Also, I hate it when people look at a trailer in a theater, lean over to me and tell me "That's going to be a good movie," Thanks Nostradamus, but I think I'll follow my instincts.

*Quite frankly, we already know this about every movie that came out or will come out after 2005.

Edit: Reach: Take a good look at that pic up there, I worked hard on it (for five minutes)