Editorial: Judging a Movie by its Trailer

Posted by Dr. Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on December 26, 2007

I’m sitting in a darkened theater with my lips planted firmly in the first make out session of my life. My tiny eighth-grade brain is whizzing, trying to comprehend how I, a hapless loser, got a girl as cute as this to even sit near me. The only reasonable explanation I have is that the movie we’re watching has a magical hold over the fairer sex, forcing them to make kissing decisions they wouldn’t normally make. That movie was Titanic.

Leaving the theater, I asked my date what she thought of the movie. After all, we did get to see most of it. Then, she said something that surprised me. She told me it just wasn’t what she thought it was going to be like. The movie – not the kissing.

This is the first I remember wondering if our expectations could ruin a film for us. After leveling off from my pubescent daze, I started thinking about how Titanic was advertised. What looked like an epic tale of adventure, turned out to be an epic love story. The trailers had given one expectation while the movie delivered another.

Since then, I’ve heard the mantra repeated from concession stands to critic blogs. “The movie just wasn’t what I expected.”

But does it have to be? I have friends who refuse to watch trailers for this very reason. It’s tough to bring the message and tone of a feature length movie into less than two minutes. A trailer may feature every good moment a movie has to offer. It might color the film in a certain light that just doesn’t play upon viewing. It could turn you on to a movie you won’t like or turn you off to one that you will.

And the trailer isn’t the only bit that forms our opinions for us. We critics do our part to educate the public for better or worse. With the explosion of talkbackers, bloggers and viral marketing, we’re all to blame for creating impressions about a movie that you haven’t seen yet. From the studio on down to the last guy or gal that paid ten bucks for admission.

This is the way it has to be, though. The studios have to put out advertising to get you into the seats. They have to do something to convince you to give up your money for the alluring draw of the aperture. They paint the best possible picture in order to have the best chance of drawing in dollar signs on opening weekend.

It’s gone wrong before, though. Fight Club is my favorite example. When this film was released, marketing teams had no idea what to do with it. How do you market a neo-modern movie about anarchy adapted from a dark, satire novel about destructing yourself as a means to self-improvement? The teams decided to punt and advertised it as a movie about dudes fighting. Buttoned-down cubicle workers start underground boxing clubs – now with more violence! But the movie is so much more than that.

And the movie flopped. Was it all because of marketing? Probably not. But I heard that old familiar chorus ringing in my ears again – those who wanted shallow excuses to see guys punch each other were disappointed. It just wasn’t what they thought it was going to be like. Then, the crowd that sought to avoid another plotless fighting movie found a new cult favorite once they finally caught wind of it.

If you thought about it, you’d probably be able to think of dozens of examples of movies that were advertised as something they weren’t. Some movies looked terrible, but turned out to be good. Super Troopers, Rushmore, Stealth, 10 Things I Hate About You, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Others seemed like fun only to disappoint. The Thirteenth Floor, Summer of Sam, Club Dread, The Lost World.

You probably disagree with my list, but the point is, you can make your own. We all have movies that we felt duped into thinking would be good and movies that we avoided only to watch later and enjoy. Advertisers even release multiple trailers to reach different niche markets on different levels. They’re good at making us feel a certain way before we even get our ticket ripped.

Which leads me to the biggest question of all: how much do our expectations shape our opinion of the movie? Would I have liked The Lost World more if I hadn’t expected so much from it? Would I have been less surprised at liking Rushmore if the advertising hadn’t made it look so terrible?

The answer is an obvious ‘yes’.

There’s the famous political example of George W. Bush’s debate strategy when facing Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election. Bush knew he couldn’t win, so his advisors spread stories into the media about Bush only hoping he would do decently, to fair well against an Ivy League debate master, to not screw up that badly. In short, he lowered the bar.

And it worked. The response to the debates was that Bush had lost them, but that he did so much better than people expected. How could Gore not have blown him out of the water? If Bush had painted himself as optimistic about winning the debates, the outcome would have been far different. Expectations shape opinion.

In a perfect world, we could walk into a theater only with the mild hope of enjoying a fun movie. We’d judge it based on what was presented to us – not line up what was presented alongside what we thought should have been presented. But in the real world, we know this isn’t the case, and it raises several good questions. Could a movie make a purposefully lackluster trailer in order to appear better than it is? Could studios rely more on word of mouth after opening weekend instead of overselling a movie in its trailer? Can we even trust that we like something of its own merit or are we doomed to judge by comparison only?

Nothing is stand alone. Walking out of a movie theater having made out for the first time would instantly change the way I looked at romance – and at movies themselves. All of the sudden, I had an opinion. Sometimes I think we seek only to reinforce opinions – a movie sucks because it’s supposed to suck. Other times I wonder if we can let our preconceived notions slide – after all, the real thing can hardly ever live up to the hype. Unless you’re talking about making out in a darkened theater. That, pretty much always, lives up to the hype. I know I can’t avoid trailers – I write for a movie site after all – but as of now, I’m going to attempt to clear my mind as much as possible, let the movies I watch speak for themselves, and avoid hating a film just because it wasn’t what I expected it to be.

Talking Point: Have you ever been duped by movie marketing?

Read more articles by Dr. Cole Abaius