Warning, this article contains spoilers for Spider-man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Evan Almighty.
I’m a sucker for a good movie trailer. The skill it takes to condense a 120-plus minute film into a 150 second blow-by-blow of why I should see some movie astounds me. Take Marie Antoinette. The original trailer featured a young Marie frolicking with friends, having parties and just generally making pre-French Revolution France look like a just a damn good time. Put on top of this my affinity for teen drama and the fact that the entire trailer was played alongside English rock band New Order’s “Age of Consent,” and you have a winning combination in my book. Of course, the movie turned out to be bland, hollow and a chore to sit through — but the trailer, as always, reflected all the positive hopes I can have for a film.
That being said, I’ve discovered my breaking point in regards to trailers. I respect that the film industry needs to make money, and that to do so it often employs aggressive tactics that would put Che Guevara to shame, but enough is enough.
Spider-Man 3, you may have heard of it. How could you not have? Thanks to the endless stream of online advertisements, TV commercials and streaming trailers, I can now almost describe to you, in chronological order, the events of the entire movie. How Eddie Brock becomes Venom, the fact that Sandman is now the one who killed Uncle Ben, Spider-Man’s climactic battle with Harry Osborn, the appearance of Gwen Stacy — it’s all too much.
Even ignoring the fact that films represent a quasi-religious and sacred experience for me, one that should not be tarnished by spoiler overload, I just like to be surprised when I actually get to, you know, the movie part.
And Spider-Man 3 isn’t the only culprit in this dastardly attempt to take the fun out of plot twists. Last year’s The Queen and the Last King of Scotland trailers essentially outline the sum-total of the movie. Yes, they’re both based on historical events, but pardon me if I’m not versed on my Queen Elizabeth II and Idi Amin history. And of course Captain Jack Sparrow wasn’t going to stay dead forever, but did they have to be pumping out production photos of Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End so soon after the preceding film was released? And it’s not as if the recent trailer for Pirates 3 leaves any doubt in the audience’s mind — hell, it even shows scenes from the final battle, everyone that’s involved and a proposal that probably should have stayed a secret.
Evan Almighty is guilty of the same. As was the case with its predecessor Bruce Almighty, everything hinges on the lead character’s revelations in the face of Biblical events. The latest trailer gives us more of the Noah mythos than I needed, because you see the real surprise would be in whether the flood happens and if so how it would play out. The people constructing the trailer for Evan Almighty felt it would be good to spare us the surprise of the “will they, won’t they” flood sequence and just give it to us in the trailer itself. So thoughtful.
I suppose I’ve gotten latched onto things like this because over the years I’ve always heard people say there’s nothing left that’s original and it’s all been done before — in regards to everything from films and fiction to life itself. The ability for films to surprise me is paramount to my denying the belief that nothing new can be done.
Trailers jam-packed with surprise cameos and plot revelations rob me of the ability to walk into that movie theater and judge the narrative objectively. I’m not asking for a moratorium on movie trailers. I’m asking to let surprises like those found in The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Memento and The Crying Game to remain just that: surprises.
