Doesn't it seem like movie trailers are becoming more numerous, more detailed, and more annoying? Well, it's not only you who feels that way. Science does too. Americans are just about fed up with all of the exposition in movie trailers, a new study shows:
According to a new study, half (49 percent) of Americans feel that movie trailers these days give away too many of a movie’s best scenes, with a full 16 percent agreeing strongly.
Count me among the 49 percent.
In a recent episode of the Mamo podcast, Matt Brown and Matt Price argue that spoiler-laden trailers are a result of moviegoers' shrinking attention spans. Generic movie watchers have only so much time and so much money to spend on tickets, popcorn, and 18 oz. "small" Diet Cokes. The only way to grab the attention of your average ADHD, obese, prescription-drug-rattled American is to spend five minutes hitting him over the head repeatedly with plot points as "O Fortuna" plays in the background.
But this alters the relationship between moviegoer and movie. If you see the Hulk catching Iron Man from out of the sky in the trailer, then six months later you will spend the first two hours of a two-hour-and-forty-five-minutes flick waiting for it to happen again.
Drama, drained.
Of course, according to the study quoted above, tell-all trailers make more people want to see the movie. There’s no incentive for studios to reverse course. Boo.
The Matts cite Skyfall as an example of a trailer that keeps its plot close to the chest. The trailer flashes a striking image of Javier Bardem and a burning house, but there is no context to the scene.
But Sam Mendes and whoever cut the trailer could afford to be obscure. Skyfall had the advantage of the James Bond brand. The public knows what to expect from a Bond movie, so the studio can be coy.
But maybe there's an effective middle ground, where the trailer gives away a lot of the plot, but only flirts with the big reveal.
The trailer out now that does that the best: Catching Fire.