This week, Neil Calloway is suffering from trailer fatigue…
1st July 2015, 6th November 2015, 17th December 2015. What are you doing on those dates? I bet some of you know already.
For those that don’t know, they are the release dates for Terminator: Genysis, the new Bond film, Spectre, and the latest film in a small series of independent films called Star Wars. In the past couple of weeks we have had the release of the Star Wars trailer, a press conference about Bond, and the new Terminator trailer, all shortly after the Jurassic World promo was released. I like a good trailer as much as the next person, but when people start looking forward not to the film itself being released but its trailer, then we have a problem. There was even a fifteen second teaser trailer for the new Terminator trailer. We’re not getting excited about a film we’ve just seen anymore, we’re excited about a film we haven’t even seen the trailer for yet.
I think I know when this trend began, and I played along. It was late 1998, in the days before YouTube, and I recorded a trailer (on VHS tape) from MTV. I lost count of the amount of times I watched and rewatched it. In 1999, the film came out, and I was disappointed, and I was not alone. The film was, of course, The Phantom Menace. Though I have a soft spot for moments of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars prequels are not great films, but I can’t help but wonder if they wouldn’t have been better received if there hadn’t been this mass hysteria running up to their release. Getting excited about a film before it is out will only backfire when the film turns out to be bad, and a film is more likely to disappoint you if you’ve whipped yourself up into a frenzy about it for months before its release.
A while back there was a buzz about a spec script that had been snapped up for production. Called Nottingham, it was a revisionist take on the Robin Hood legend, with the Sheriff of Nottingham as the good guy. Russell Crowe was going to star and it was going to be brilliant. Ridley Scott signed on to direct, and somewhere along the way the film turned into Robin Hood, a poor Gladiator clone set in Medieval England. I might have liked the film more if I hadn’t known what it could have been.
I like reading about casting speculation, love watching trailers – Flickering Myth’s trailer reviews always reveal something I missed – but I can’t help but feel that together it all leads to a disappointing cinematic experience. I have far more satisfying viewings when I know next to nothing about a film I’m watching. Knowing too much before going into a film usually results in a film not meeting expectations.
So, it’s still December but here is my New Year’s Resolution; in 2015 the only trailers I watch are going to be before films I go to see in the cinema, or catch on television. I’m going to avoid articles about casting rumours. I don’t need to see explosions from the new Fast and Furious film before it’s out, I don’t need to know the name of the characters from the new Bond film, I don’t need to know which actor from a successful TV series will end up disappointing in the long awaited new science fiction film. I’m going to watch films knowing as little as possible about them. We’ll see how it goes.
Still, that bit in the new Terminator trailer where Sarah Connor says “come with me if you want to live”? How awesome is that? I’m excited. When’s the film out?
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future installments.
Originally published December 6, 2014. Updated November 29, 2022.
