Neil Calloway looks at how movies become monsters…
We’ve all seen it, and, perhaps unknowingly, we’ve all played a part in it. It’s the self-sustaining hype of a blockbuster. It starts months, even years before the film comes out; if a movie is a sequel it starts the moment you leave the cinema of the original, if not before; think of all the sequels greenlit before the first film has been released. The reason you know they’re being made is part of the marketing for the first movie; if they’re making a sequel, it’s got to be good, so let’s go and see it.
The casting hype, the directors who leave, who joins the project, the rewrites and reshoots, it all adds to the hype and instils a morbid curiosity in us to see what mangled wreck emerges from the car crash.
The release of the poster, the motion poster, the character poster, the teaser trailer, the trailer, the international trailer; they all add to interest in the movie, then you hear how the tracking for the opening weekend is going; it’s looking like it will set a record. You’re hyped. You go and see the film as soon as it comes out, and it’s then that the hype starts to sustain itself.
You change your social media profile picture to something from the film – maybe one of the character posters (you don’t quite trust the premature fanboys that do this before the movie is out), you start reading and sharing stories about what certain scenes mean and the Easter Eggs only true believers will understand.
Then the stories about how well the film is doing kick in – as the tracking stated, it’s a record opening. With big movies, it’s always a record opening, even if the marketing people have to dig deep and be rather creative – it could be the biggest opening for a comic book movie in April, or the biggest opening for that particular star. Still, the stories come out, people less keen about the film than the first wave of believers see them, and if they haven’t already seen them, it makes them think “it’s a record opening, it must be good, let’s go and see it”.
The dissenting reactions also come out – it’s not as good as people say it is, don’t believe the hype, but they’re all part of the marketing train, getting more people interested – if there’s controversy, you don’t want to be left out, you have to pick a side, and to pick a side you have to see the film. If you’ve seen the film before, you go again to see if your first instincts were correct.
If a film hasn’t had the hype surrounding it before its release but becomes a sleeper hit, you get news stories about it defying expectations, which all add to the publicity, and then you end up going to see it. If it’s showing on three screens at your local multiplex, which it probably will be at this point, you don’t have much choice if you want to go to the cinema; you have to see it.
Before you know it, you’ve been to see a film you weren’t that interested in twice, and told dozens of people about it. You’ve become, unwittingly, part of the marketing machine. Then you click on a story about a another movie in the franchise being made…
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
