Comments on: And Another Thing…What’s With All The Trailer Hype?

By: Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87)

Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:48:35 +0000

A very good article! Generally speaking, I’ll geek out on any SFF movie trailer, but I actually rarely watch them. Trailers often pass me by until friends point them out to me or I end up getting linked movie trailers on YouTube while watching music videos.

That said, movies I thought were awesome after watching their trailers: Hobbit, Avengers, John Carter, Underworld: Awakening, Thor, Amazing Spider-Man. In each of these cases, the movies exceeded the expectations built up by the trailers, most apparent in the case of John Carter and Amazing Spider-Man.

Movies that were decent: Battleship, X-Men: First Class, Transformers 3, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Green Lantern. The trailer were OTT for all, but the movies were rather mediocre sadly.

Movies that failed to live up to the hype: Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, Men in Black 3, Conan, and Immortals. Each of these movies was over-hyped and had thin plots with redundant world-building/characterisation. In the case of DKR, Prometheus and Immortals, I was really excited by the trailers, and the letdown was a kick in the guts.

By: Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87)

Abhinav Jain (@abhinavjain87) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:44:10 +0000

Since I’ve never read the source material on WWZ, my expectations from the trailer for the movie are meh. It looks good. Nothing spectacular.

Prometheus was a pile of crab poop.

By: David Whitbeck

David Whitbeck — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 02:15:09 +0000

I think that the people that make the trailers have a better grasp on what is interesting than the writers for the films in general. Underworld: Awakening was a blah movie, and I’m sure everyone thought the first two minutes of the film were cool but disappointed when they realized that was not what the film was about. The trailer guys knew much better than the writers did that the movie was a stinker, but the prologue had the makings of something watchable.

I like Promotheus, but my impression from the trailer was that half of the movie was about them stopping the aliens from destroying Earth, the trailer implied escalation that the movie didn’t deliver on.

I thought the trailers for the other two movies you mentioned were dead on. The Hobbit trailer promised dull, overly grandiose exposition not matching the atmosphere of the novel and the film certainly lived up to that expectation. Anyone that walked away from that trailer excited, were excited to revisit Middle Earth, certainly there was nothing interesting in that trailer.

The Dark Knight Rises teaser had nothing about the movie except the flirtation with the idea that Batman will die. It had nothing in it, how could you expect anything from that teaser? The full trailer promised two confrontations with Bane, Catwoman would be in the movie, and the movie would be a conclusion.. and it was all of those and more.

By: Nick Sharps

Nick Sharps — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:28:55 +0000

My expectations for World War Z couldn’t possibly be any lower. The trailer for Pacific Rim sort of trounced my expectations of that as well.

On the other hand, as an Ad Major I appreciate this statement:

“Whomever worked on Prometheus deserves a raise in pay and an award: they sold what appeared to be a smart, interesting science fiction thriller with awesome visuals. Instead, we got a confusing, often stupid, good looking film.”

The marketers did exactly what they were supposed to do it’s the freaking director that failed us on that one.