We now life in the era of accessibility. If you have access to the Internet, you are able to find anything in the palm of your hand.
This has been increasingly evident through trailers of films in the past few years. Trailers are giving away too much plot, twists, character arcs and moments, which spoil the experience of seeing these events in the cinema. This in some cases, many fans can over-hype these films, which allows many fans to become disappointed with the final product of a film, whether the film was critically well executed or not.
With films now releasing teaser trailers, trailers, TV Spots, featurettes, it is getting harder and harder to go into a film with the small amount of knowledge that people had prior to the internet.
This can cause major issues for the film-loving community and consumers in general. The easiest example of this is this year is the trailer for Alan Taylor’s, Terminator Genisys, which gave away the film’s major plot and its twist in the two-minute trailer. With Terminator being a highly loved franchise, putting the twist in the trailer just spoilt the film for fans and made many people wish that studios had restraint.
The fact that more and more studios are showing more and more in their trailers is only showing the new marketing technique in this modern era. Studios are investing millions and millions of dollars into some of these films and they are scared to make the money and hopefully the profit back.
In this year’s over-hyped film, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, it was truly through the hype seen in the trailers created by studio executives that let the film down. The first Avengers film made over a billion and half worldwide, and until Jurassic World held the biggest opening weekend of all time. Its sequel has already made over a billion, while still running in theatres. Studios didn’t need to release 2 teaser trailers, 2 trailers and many TV spots in the lead up to this film because fans were already going and they already had a strong demographic in their audiences. The fact that the trailers released portrayed a different tone to how the film ended up having, just showed the lack of faith the studios were having in the lead up to their film.
The problem that lives with these trailers is that they ruin the experience for many people and fans from seeing these major twists or events for the first time in a cinema. This allows many people to actually prefer to wait until they film is released on DVD, so they are able to watch it in the comfort of their own home because they feel they aren’t missing out.
This also takes away the shock and thrill that many people get out of most films. When the initial trailer for Spielberg’s classic Jurassic Park was released in 1993, and you only catch a glimpse of the dinosaurs within the film, keeping everything besides the basic premise of the film under wraps. This allowed the shock factor to be at the height of tis powers, unlike now, which made many children and teenagers go see the movie multiple times.
These days, we see all the best bits in the trailer. This allows most of our experiences in the theatre to become deflated, from seeing everything before actually going. In some cases, this makes the trailer watching experience much more fun than the movie-going experience.
Industry researchers at the Independent began a survey near the release of for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, with 500 film lovers responding. More then 80 per cent of these film-goers were incredibly disappointed with the film after seeing the trailers released. Researchers believe people become strongly irritated when a film is just a longer version of the trailer, hence spoiling the entire outcome of the film.
It should be said that the studios, not the film’s director, create most trailers. This shows that these studios are in a point of contention when it comes to wanting to sell tickets and marketing a film to make sure people come see it. That includes showing some of the best parts of a film, which gives the whole film away, just to secure ticket purchases.
However, it seems that despite this, films are still making more money then the Hollywood industry has ever made. With Jurassic World now having broken the opening weekend record, with over $500 million, film-goers and cinefiles are still going to see these films.
