Okay, just watch the trailer below. Ignore the movie as much as possible. Also, for the love of god, ignore the National song ruined forever. The point is to see what the trailer does, not so much to worry about the movie.
Okay, so now you’ve seen the trailer. Let’s recap the basic chain of events:
There’s a dude and his brother who are close.
The brother gets killed.
The dude finds a ghost version of his brother in the woods.
The dude meets a spunky girl.
The dude discovers that thinking less about his brother makes him disappear.
The girl announces she is sailing around the world.
The girl leaves and gets lost.
The dude happens to be an awesome sailor, the only one who can save her.
The dude has to choose between his ghost brother and a hot babe.
Now, plot quality aside, how much is there left of this fucking movie that you don’t know going in? What is the point of watching the first hour and a half? Hell, you’ll sit through the first twenty minutes just waiting for this kid to die. He can’t die soon enough because you already know damn well that’s a major plot point. But no worries, he comes back to life in the magical woods. All that’s left of this entire movie is to see whether the dude goes sailing away and whether the ghost is gone forever or lives on in someone’s heart or some such shit.
Why are movie trailers doing this?
Here’s another example:
So it looks like a stalkerish movie, but the shit hits the fan for real when you find out Samuel L. Jackson is a cop. Why would you make that reveal in the trailer? Jesus christ, there’s no way that happens before 40 minutes in the movie, so now you’re sitting there like an asshole, and every time the characters are saying shit like, “How can he keep getting away with this?” you’re shouting back, “Because he’s a cop, you dopes!” The fucking trailer negates the purpose of half the movie.
Folks, the point of a trailer is to get you interested in a movie, not to tell you every little thing about it so that you can go in knowing what to expect. You’ll hear the complaint about comedies that all the good stuff was in the trailer, but dramas don’t get enough credit for having ALL THE STUFF in the trailer.
Let’s look at one done right:
Okay, so after watching that, you don’t really know much about the movie, but I think you can decide whether or not you want to see it. Your opinion is probably either something like Fuck yeah or Meh. And that’s the fucking point. The trailer shouldn’t be trying to convince people who don’t want to see something that they should, because that’s not going to happen. The trailer should let you know about the fucking movie, give you just enough info to help you decide whether or not you want to see it, and then leave the rest of the movie for viewing.
Assholes.