Boiling Point: Cut an Honest Trailer

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 19, 2009

This Is Not a Battle Scene.

Trailers are awesome. They’re sweet tools to get us psyched for the movies we look forward to and an entertaining way of introducing us to new films we haven’t even heard of. I’m the kind of guy who gets to the theater early just to make sure I catch all of the trailers. We Rejects surf the web trailer-hunting and can sit and watch them for hours. Which is why it hurts so much when the trailer lies to us. When the person behind it cuts a trailer that tells a story that has nothing to do with what’s going on. Trust is the most essential ingredient to every relationship and if our introduction to the film is a lie, soon we’ll take solace in the arms of another.

I totally get that the real purpose of a trailer is to get me to see the film. It has to be exciting, it has to reel me in. I understand that. But the studios and advertising companies need to know that I want to see the movie that was advertised. Take, for example, Vacancy 2: The First Cut. Many of the clips in the first trailer came from the original flick. I enjoyed Vacancy and was expecting the prequel to have some common threads with it. I mean, why else would you use footage from the original so heavily? But in actually watching the movie, it was complete and utter bullshit. The motel was different and there were no returning characters or threads connecting the films together. God damn I hate being lied to.

Then you have the “mysterious” trailer that wants you to believe, well, nothing about the movie. So it’s like “Hey, this movie exists and like, you should see it, but I can’t really tell you what it’s about.” Seven Pounds: guilty as charged. I guess that’s a marketing ploy, a gambit you can take. But even a mystery should give you some sort of clue as to what the mystery is going to be. I think in the end, this flick was hurt by the poorly presented trailer and advertising.

The first movie to really raise my ire, though not the first to play the game of deception, was Cold Mountain. The trailer made it look like some awesome Civil War action film, complete with explosions and gunfights and doses of awesome. Instead we got 2 hours and 35 minutes of not action. Seriously. There was one action scene in that whole movie and it was the first thing we saw. The gunfight at the end, it freaking cut away from it. Such bullshit. I don’t know if I ever felt more ripped off. So maybe it’s a good thing we sent Hunter to watch The Unborn, because from the trailer I thought it looked like a badass movie filled with creepy ass stuff and rotating heads. Turns out the real deal is that there are only a few moments of scary awesome head spinning spread throughout a crap movie. Why can’t movies have honest trailers or honest titles? Everyone knows exactly what’s in store with My Bloody Valentine 3D or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It’s cool that trailers exist. Love ‘em. And I know it isn’t art, but advertising. But that doesn’t mean I’m not upset anytime I get tricked into the theater. I’m pretty sure that’s what caused the burning of Rome – false advertisements for awesome “Gladiator versus Animal fights,” but when the people showed up it was just a regular “Feed Unarmed and Tied-up Christians to Lions Day.” But what can ya do? Right now, all I do is curse the studios, kick over potted plants, and dive past my boiling point when I see these patently dishonest trailers.


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  • I think the main issue is that the people who cut the trailers are only given a few bits of footage without seeing the full movie...and a small guideline for what the studio wants to see....sometimes like with teasers there isn't even a rough cut finished so really there isn't a story set up...Terminator Salvation's teaser is a perfect example it didn't tell us anything besides it's the future and there are terminators...it is annoying when they cut a trailer to make a thriller like History of Violence out to be this shoot em up action flick...they do testing for the trailers online and in test groups so they only release a trailer that those people liked...I don't think it matters if it represents the story which it should
  • I wrote about this over a year ago concerning the idea of expectations in marketing. The main problems seem to be:

    1) Showing all the good scenes in the trailer.
    2) Misrepresenting a narrow film to draw in a larger audience.

    I get frustrated with bad trailers for the same reason I get frustrated with bad commercials. If we look at sales as a service to the consumer, it should be done in the best way possible to maximize interest while delivering on that expectation. If I see a commercial for a product that's meant to mop floors, and I buy it only to find out it's crappy at mopping floors but awesome at tenderizing meat, I'll be pissed off. Unless I'm a butcher.

    But still, marketing is difficult. However, when a trailer doesn't accurately represent the story, it's just lazy or stupid advertisement creation. Or just malicious.
  • I have a stigma of not getting to the theaters soon enough to see all the trailers, sometimes for me the trailers are just as important as the movie. So many times I've seen trailers then saw the movie and would wonder, what the hell happened to the cool scene from the preview. It's all sadly about getting you hooked in and having no qualms about throwing down ten bucks to see something that may be nothing like you thought.

    Great article Robert, I'm glad someone finally brought this mess up.
  • Right on -- how accurately does the trailer represent the movie? Some trailers, I'm sure I'd have seen nearly every awesome scene in the film after watching the preview, or even be able to guess the entire narrative arc of the film. The real problem editing the trailer is: how much do I put in, and how much do I leave out? And damn it, either way it should be honest.
  • I actually enjoy the dishonesty of trailers, it's become an art, or a skill I should say, to be able to tell a good movie from a bad one, based solely on the trailer. I happen to be really good (lucky?) at it so I treat it like a game, although sometimes it comes back to bite me in the ass...like Seven Pounds and Blindness.
  • I'm sure most people here have seen this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf7h6o3I8yw.A trailer for The Shining, re-cut as a feel-good romantic comedy. Genius.
  • I think what Christopher M was saying applies more to teasers, such as his example 'Terminator: Salvation', than it does to full fledged trailers.

    I agree with what Homero says, about picking out a bad movie has become fun. One thing I luck for that has yet to fail me is when someone falls down in a trailer, only to pop back up and say their okay, always ends up being a shitty movie.

    Though no one falls down, Che is very similar to Cold Mountain's trailer, showing every scene of action throughout the four hours during the trailer, failing to inform the audience that most of the flick is spent watching people talk about Che in Spanish, as he stands by and observes.
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