Our Obsession With Movie Trailers Must End

Last month marked the end of San Diego Comic-Con, where fans of comic books indulged in cosplay and got to meet with some of their favourite creators.

But seemingly more important were the teasers for upcoming movies. Altogether, there were sixteen film trailers released during the convention.

Comic-Con has become a dumping ground of marketing material. Once exclusively the domain of comic book movie trailers, now we get anything that’s remotely related to a past property. Trailers for Doctor Strange and Justice League are par for the course. A trailer for a new King Kong movie? Sure. Guy Ritchie’s version of King Arthur? A bit of a stretch but I’ll let it slide. Bad Santa 2?  Legends of the Hidden Temple? Now you know it’s a joke.

Why do we forgive movie studios for shoving trailers into inappropriate conventions? Do a quick search online and you’ll find that there are virtually no complaints about how there were too many trailers at Comic-Con. In fact, entire news articles are dedicated to the trailers that you might have missed. We’re certainly guilty of it here.

Here's the thing: Movie trailers are just ads. We know this and yet unlike other forms of marketing we seek them out. We wait anxiously for the next trailer to come out just to catch a glimpse of some new footage. There is an entire industry on YouTube that depends on having trailers to be reviewed and broken down. The trend seems to be that audiences don’t mind that they get mildly spoiled from trailers as long as they’re fed a steady diet of new information. There have even been events exclusively held to view trailers; remember, there was once a time where we’d walk into cinemas late, so we wouldn’t have to sit through them. Make no mistake, trailers are now content.

Marketing strategies also seem to be wildly out of control. I could not believe my eyes when I saw there was a preview for the teaser trailer of Star Wars: Rogue One. Let me repeat that. There was a preview for the teaser trailer, which is meant to be a preview for the actual trailer, which is meant to be a preview of the actual movie. (Inception eat your heart out.)

And the endless teasing of new trailers is not the worst of it. There are about eight minutes of total trailer footage for Suicide Squad out there, and that’s not counting the separate character trailers for each of the leads and the eighteen TV spots that have been released thus far.

At this point you might as well be only paying to see a movie because you feel bad for having already seen so much of it for free.

Our excitement for trailers has grown exponentially with the rise of the comic book movie. Studios have realised that a sure-fire way to make money is to make movies based on existing properties. But what makes their marketing strategies so effective is that we now seek out these trailers. These movies basically market themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with the existence of trailers. I’ve discovered many movies I otherwise would have never heard of if not for seeing their trailer. But the sheer volume and manner in which they are presented for a single film ruins and tarnishes the movie going experience. Movie trailers are free. Surprises are priceless.

Louie Zhu is one of Student Edge’s student contributors. Learn more about the contributors program.

Photo: Warner Bros.