Have Movie Trailers Declined in Quality?

We've all seen movie trailers that looked great for movies turned out to be awful. Is it that easy to mislead the savvy American consumer?

Today I saw a clip from Pulp Fiction out of context in a documentary about Hollywood. The scene they showed was Jules and Vincent's visit with Brad (Frank Whaley) and company to take back the briefcase. You know, the "do they speak English in What" scene. I had always remembered the scene as happening in a room with no windows. When I watched the scene out of context I realized light was streaming in the windows of the young thieves' apartment. The scene is so dark, the young men's trapped sense of doom so palpable, that I literally saw the room as dark every time I saw the film.

After watching the clip I understood how a movie trailer can completely mislead an audience. One may go and sit through a drama having bought a ticket to a comedy. Movies have had no real surprise endings since The Sixth Sense; every twist ending turns out to be the same. One of the main characters is screwed but doesn't figure it out 'til the end when all the clues fall into place.

Because audiences now unravel the secret of the movie before the end, the studio must cut the theatrical trailers in a deliberately confusing way. The thought process behind this decision probably involved a sentiment against insulting the viewer's intelligence. Of course, the person who makes the big decisions about the trailer is so far removed from the average person's experience that the movie ends up insulting their intelligence regardless. Do they really think we're going to watch a movie that is entirely different in tone from its trailer and not realize that we're not seeing the movie we were pitched?

A fine example of this deception is the Robin Williams vehicle Man of the Year. Although marketed as a comedy, it turns into a political thriller about ten minutes into the movie. Another common trick is to put all the funny (or scary, as the genre dictates) into the trailer. Any successful mainstream movie has one scene to please everyone. The scene is included in the trailer and voila! Ticket sales abound. Never mind that the audience leaves with brains as unsatisfied as their poor bodies, having consumed all those empty calories in the overpriced snacks. But now the masses have already spent their ticket money, so the trailer guys got what they wanted. And this weekend's moviegoers send their co-workers to see the movie the next weekend, eager to dupe as they have been duped.

You would never believe based on today's theater experience that half the fun of the going to the movie used to be the trailers. Movie geeks will rent and buy compilations of classic movie previews, most notably those culled from the 42^nd Street theaters' heydays. Each trailer is a mini-movie, some with plots of their own. One such compilation includes trailer for a double feature of I Dismember Mama and The Blood Spattered Bride which intercuts scenes from the movies with a fake news report at the theater after the show.

As for the modern trailer, is it merely representative of the modern film? This story must come back around to Tarantino. The retro-extravaganza double feature Grindhouse includes fake trailers for movies by contemporary directors in the sixties' style. They were not only fun, but they made me want to watch the obviously one-dimensional pseudo-movies they advertised. Imagine as a child in the eighties, in the days of lining up around the block to see Ghostbusters and Raiders, having wished for the release of an old drive-in movie that doesn't exist. That wish would have never happened. Are the days of the great preview as gone as the inspirations for all these remakes?