Trailers, Trailercide, and Cynicism

You just never know...

I am a sucker for trailers. Like this one. A million or so have passed in front of my eyes and I still get excited by what the movie (or TV show) has in store.  With age, the knowledge that most films never live up to the hype and that people who make the trailer are not the same set of people who make the movie, has instilled a dose of healthy cynicism.  But I still get chills.  I love a great story.  I don’t care.  If it has the chance at being good at all, the little kid in me who could not sleep on Christmas Eve is hooked.

The trailer for The Phantom Menace was just awesome.  Lightsabers, aliens, lasers, spaceships; it was unbelievably cool, and my kids were the perfect age for all of that in 1999.  It was the first video I ever downloaded; and because I still had a dial-up connection it took 14 months or so.  The longtime Star Wars fans were all eventually disappointed by the movie in one way or another when it came out, and rightfully so. But my kids were into it; and when I look on the bright side of things, my kids and I had a good time being excited about the movie for the months leading up to the release.  I did not feel slighted, because the trailer did not lie to me.  It showed a lot of visual awesomeness that the movie delivered on.  It was all that plot and acting and dialogue that got in the way.  The experience was not ruined by trailercide.

Trailercide occurs when the trailer flat-out misrepresents the movie you are about to see in the hopes of selling tickets to a normally unwilling audience. Your experience has been killed in some way. A love story marketed as an adventure film.  A drama cut together to look like a comedy.  An action movie with only two scenes or so of anything you could consider action.  A movie star is featured in the cut of the trailer but his actual screen time equates to a cameo.  We all know it.  It’s the marketing department lying to screw people out of their money.  There are also instances of trailercide that occur when marketing does not even understand what type of movie they are trying to promote.

A quality film is usually more than one thing.  It is dramatic, with scenes of lightheartedness, and maybe a dash of adventure. A trailer cannot be accurately edited without some understanding of what the film portrays. The creators of the film have one vision, which they had in mind when the project began and that included its marketability.  Then the trailer is created by a different group of people that have no emotional stakes with the movie itself.   However, trailercide is weeded out quicker these days. When the internet and movie sites have a feeling they are about to be duped, they are on that shit.  I’m glad they’re on the case, but I’d like to focus on what makes me get excited about trailers in general, and why I prefer to be a sucker.

Some people believe nothing of what they hear or see.  They are skeptical about everything and they believe those who are not deserve to get burned.  I take a different approach. Cynicism is so easy.  I have never subscribed to the idea that cynicism goes hand in hand with adulthood.  It is a tool in the toolbox of dealing with life in America. And it is an important one.  But cynicism in the face of art or effort or fun is just a life-killer and something I try to avoid.  I love a good movie or TV show. That’s part of my input of life. I wish I was a person who could just be satisfied by the birds in the trees and waves crashing on the beach.  I’m greedy; it’s not enough.  I love ideas and stories and characters and science fiction and heroes and escapes and love stories and all of that stuff.  All of that stuff is promoted through trailers and I’m finding myself even more addicted to them as I get older.  Sometimes, I am as gullible as a four-year-old.

On my old podcast, I remember talking about an incident with my dad about 20 years ago.  We were watching TV and we saw the first teaser trailer for the movie Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone.  My dad is into that stuff.  The trailer was this and only this:  Stallone, running toward the camera, on a cliff, then diving into the abyss.  That is it.  Fifteen seconds.  My dad says “That looks great!”  What looks great?  Stallone running and jumping? That’s not a movie… Fast forward about twenty years to me in front of my TV.  A promo for the upcoming series Justified comes on.  It was about the same length; an unknown man is slowly entering a house from the front porch, and Timothy Olyphant in a Stetson cocks his pistol behind a nearby corner.  Done.  Within two seconds I think:  “Oh I have to watch this!”  (Although, I think my instincts were a little better than my father’s).

I’d rather get screwed over a few times and still get excited by things than think everything is disappointing at first blush.  Trailers make a promise of a little fun and excitement and that is all I want.  Sometimes they are worth all the fuss.