Movies Trailers Are Bad. They Don't Have To Be
To shake things up, I complain in this one for a bit. And then I recommend some movies.
When I was growing up, we used to go back and forth on the weekends to see my grandparents and/or aunts and uncles and/or cousins. We’d drive for 45-90 minutes from New Jersey to Queens or Westchester or Roslyn and then hang out there for a while and then drive 45-90 minutes back. It wasn’t every weekend but it was certainly more often than not. Once I eventually got over my car-sickness maladies—it took a while—I would go use the knockoff YouTube app I had at the time on my iTouch and watch movie trailers that I had downloaded beforehand. “Why did I do this?” you might ask. Well, because I was insane. Still am.
This is going to sound like an old guy take, but movie trailers used to be good, and they aren’t anymore. Instead of being a 30-second captivating tease or a 90-second enticing sneak-peek at what’s to come, they’re now bloated and treat the audience like it consists of some of the dumbest people to ever exist. Which very well may be the case, but we can’t cater to them.
Trailers sometimes feature a two-second trailer for the trailer on YouTube, in case your brain can’t handle waiting a goddamn millisecond, or they spoon-feed you the entire plot, so you know exactly what you’re going in for.
A bunch of us saw The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent last week, a movie in which Nic Cage, playing a heightened version of Nic Cage, uses the skills he’s learned by osmosis in various Nic Cage moves to solve a Nic Cage-esque action plot. It’s a pretty good movie that is chockful of strong performances from Cage to Pascal to Sharon Horgan. The general synopsis I just used should be enough for anyone to want to see it. I guess its distribution company in Lionsgate doesn’t agree with that assessment, because the trailer spoils every twist, various jokes and bits and basically every plot point of the movie. It’s insane. I’d love to have seen it without all of this prior knowledge going in, but you can’t Men In Black neuralyze the trailer out of my brain.
Not only does it ruin the denouement of the film but the actual enjoyment of it as well. The jokes don’t land as hard when you know the characters’ motivations and what’s to come. Tension is immediately gone. You might as well just read the Wikipedia at this point. Massive Talent is far from the only movie lately to pull this shit; it’s just the most recent example.
Directors of recent films (see above) have gone so far as to warn their eventual viewers to steer away from trailers, so as to not be spoiled. I understand the need to reach more people with a more detailed plot description, but there’s a fine line between teasing successfully and dumping details for no good reason. Perhaps this is ridiculous (and too much information) but I once walked out of the theater before this Last Night in Soho trailer knowing that it would give everything away. I’m glad I did; watching it now, quite a few of the main actions and jump scares would’ve been less entertaining than they were when seeing it on opening night.
If you want to watch a good trailer, here’s one. It’s for Men, a horror movie that gives you a sense of dread that this film is sure to center around without telling you one single thing about what’s about to happen.
And, yes. I know there’s a full trailer out there, but I’m not going to watch it. I’m already sold.
I hate to say this (I don’t hate to say this at all), but it’s been a pretty great movie week. There’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which has its flaws but is an enjoyable comedy, along with one truly superb film and one fucking bonkers one.
The former is Dual, one of the better things I’ve watched this year. It’s a dark comedy (repeat: DARK comedy) that centers on a light sci-fi premise with Yorgos Lanthimos-styled deadpan, bizarre dialogue. It’s bleak and I was laughing throughout, no matter how depressing it gets. I’m all in on Riley Stearns’ work after this and The Art of Self-Defense, and I’m glad Karen Gillian and Aaron Paul were given some real work to do. Gillian, in particular, finds a way into this multi-dimensional character that requires quite a bit of subtle (and not-so-subtle acting). Go see this one.
The other movie I would like to recommend—and I can’t believe I’m doing this—is the new action-“comedy” Ambulance, which is one of the more fun experiences I’ve had in a theater in years. I don’t know how good of a movie it is, but who cares? I have a less-than-stellar track record with liking popular action movies, but this one got me beginning with its nuts opening sequences. Bay shoots every scene as if he was given a pile of cocaine walking onto set and every actor seems to be in on the joke, especially Jake Gyllenhaal who at one point yells about cashmere and at another point yells about herpes and is basically yelling throughout. I love how much fun he’s having and it comes through in his performance. Bay uses drones the way Terrence Malick uses shots of trees swaying in the breeze. I went in with low expectations and can’t recommend this more, just for how it keeps on upping the ante in both blood-curdling action and unintentional comedy.