#MSBThoughtsOn: Trailers
#MSBThoughtsOn is my brand new segment where I give you my opinion on movie-based themes. Since the very beginning of 2016, I decided to do something pretty unusual and even difficult to pull through: stop watching trailers for a whole year!
I did it. Kind of. Here’s my article on this experience …
Trailers are short cuts from a movie to advertise itself and make its fans excited to go and watch it. Usually, it either has some few cool action scenes or some mysterious scene to set the tone for the plot. However, there’s a thin line between making the audience super enthusiastic about it and completely ruining the movie for everyone…
I’m an authentic comics’ fanboy, but 2016 is a horrible example of the type of trailers and to prove it, I will give you some of them that I watched after the films’ release and that I was glad I missed them.
Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice
This was the second trailer for one of the most anticipated comic-book movies ever. We were all expecting something huge, but it disappointed most of its fans and part of that is due to this trailer. The mystery and the unknown seem something frightening to the producers since we basically know 95% of the plot thanks to this unbelievable piece of footage. How did this get approved? We went from knowing that Batman is fighting Superman to “oh look, Wonder Woman is here … and Doomsday as well…”. We know all the acts’ content: in the first one they meet, in the second one they fight and in the last one they team up with Wonder Woman to beat Doomsday. Batman‘s fight with Superman lost its entire impact! The surprise effect was gone.
X-Men: Apocalypse
A lot of mixed-negative reviews for this installment of the X-Men series didn’t get to me as I actually rated it positively. However, this final trailer has massive spoilers regarding not only the plot, but it ruins some fan-service moments. So, not only the surprise effect is lost (Wolverine …), but the “WOW” factor of a first viewing is no longer a thing (too much awesome action scenes, some of them fan-service). I also didn’t watch this final trailer due to its huge negative response on social media and I’m proud to say that one of the reasons why I reviewed positively this film was because of that. Had I seen this final footage, I would probably be so mad that I didn’t get to see it in theaters that I would give it a lower rating.
Suicide Squad
Now, this is by far the advertising that I hated the most. Not because it spoiled some plot details or because it ruined several awesome scenes, but because it was false. Full of lies. Was it a super funny movie with awesome incorporated soundtracks? No. Did the trailer set up Enchantress as the villain? Not really. Was Joker the main villain? No. Then, why did he appear so much on all of the trailers? Actually, why was he in the movie in the first place? Do this: remove all the scenes with Joker from the film. Watch it. What’s the difference? Right. None. I hate that movies’ companies nowadays prefer to waste all its money on some cool trailers instead of actually making a good movie.
From all this bunch of trailers, there is one that escapes this terrible self-promoting. One that is at the top of my list for “Best Movies Of 2016” and one of my favorite comic-book-to-movie adaptations ever:
Deadpool
You can watch all of is trailers and still leave the theaters with a “WOW” and surprised face. Just watch the first trailer and check the bridge fight scene with all the cars surrounding our hero … Every time something awesome is about to happen (either if it’s a simple gunshot or a kick/punch to the bad guys), it cuts to blank or to another “almost awesome” scene. It never shows us everything! It doesn’t ruin the plot by sharing some super secret details (it’s an origin story, it would be hard to spoil some mysterious character), it doesn’t show us the climax of the action scenes and it doesn’t trick us to think that this is more than what they are trying to achieve! It’s one of the best advertisement I’ve ever seen for a movie. Congrats Ryan Reynolds and the rest of the team!
You’re probably thinking “there’s no way he was able to avoid every single trailer for every single movie”. You’re not wrong, but you’re also not totally right. Every non-comic-book movies’ trailers I was able to avoid because it didn’t really matter to me (I mostly enjoy going to the theater without knowing anything from the movies’ plot or characters). However, with comic-book movies, it’s hard for someone not to spoil it for you instead of the trailers themselves, so for the exception of X-Men: Apocalypse, I did watch all of the other trailers (Suicide Squad and Deadpool had a huge advertising campaign, so it was impossible not to turn on the TV or scroll Facebook’s feed without watching part of it).
There are some other movies that showed too much on their trailers (Captain America: Civil War or even Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are two of them), but these were the ones that bugged me the most. After all this trouble, I get to the big question: “Is it worth it?”. I think it is. From the moment where I can enjoy a movie more without a trailer than with it, then I have to consider this a positive experience. However, I will no longer repeat it. Believe me, it’s not only hard to avoid them, but it also takes away some needed pre-movie excitement and goosebumps.
Finally, what do YOU think about trailers? Do you feel the same way or is it something that doesn’t really bother you? And would you like to read more of this type of article? Let me know and thank you for your attention!
