Trailers.  Teasers.  Previews.

I was going to say “These are just a few of the names…” but really it’s all the names I can think of, and maybe all the names there are for the subject of this ramble: movie previews.

To some people, they are the annoying 10-15 minutes that they have to endure before they can watch the movie for which they handed over 10 good American dollars.  Or they’re the first couple of chapters on the DVD that must be skipped before you can see the main menu.  For those folks, previews are probably nothing more than a big green blanket with a bold letter printed on it.

Side note: if anyone needs a birthday idea for me, a fleece blanket emblazoned with the MPAA green screen would be awesome.  Preferrably with an R rating (Language, Sexual Material, and Crude Humor).

To me, and a few other select people in my circle of friends, movie trailers are their own appreciable art form.  They are two-minute films that are often better than the movies they advertise.  Yet while they may build hype prior to their movie’s release date, their posthumous success is forever linked to that of the film.  If a movie sucked, no one remembers the trailer.

I won’t include TV spots into my endeavor of trailer appreciation.  While I’d like to say it’s for artistic reasoning, it’s actually something more petty than that.  In 1999, The Matrix had been in theaters about two weeks when Warner Brothers released a TV spot that showed the end of the movie with Neo stopping bullets.  I’d already seen the movie a couple times at this point, but they basically revealed the ending of the movie on broadcast TV.  I just felt it was poor taste, and 15-second trailers have left a wrinkle at the base of my neck ever since.

Yes, they can be traitors as well as champions; prophets and charlatans both.  But I would like to submit an idea to you, the reader: can, for the sake of artistic appreciation, a trailer be judged on its own merits alone?

I spend a good bit of time on places like comingsoon.net and movie-list.com where I basically make sure no trailer is released without my knowledge.  These sites do a great job of catching just about everything that’s released for the public, and my favorite feature is seeing the difference between consecutive trailers for the same movie.  For example:


Back in March, a trailer was released for a movie called Larry Crowne, starring Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.  It looks like it’s the kind of rom-com that will appeal to our hearts and our frustration with the economy.  Wow.  When I write it like that, it doesn’t sound like a winning combination at all, but the preview will smooth all that out.  It’s quirky, it’s funny, but it leaves you with a ton of set-up and no hint as to the meat of the story.  All lettuce.

If I can keep the trailer-to-hamburger comparison afloat, it had the mustard, veggies, and a good bit of cheese.  Now, as I said earlier, I don’t need my trailer to be all meat.  In fact, the thinner the patty, the better.  However, this preview had not even the lingering scent of bacon.  A selection of scenes to introduce the story arc, then a collection of soundbites to make sure it’s officially classified as a romantic-comedy starring two of the most well-loved actors in modern cinema.

Last Monday, a second trailer was released, and here’s why I love it:  it’s almost identical to the first one, but it’s got meat.  It starts off the same way, but shows a little more breadth in the set-up.  It also features lingering looks, a hint of tension between the two love birds, and things that show me the story is going to be more than just two people.

So, trailer #1: 2/3 of a burger; trailer #2: 3/4 of a burger.

I didn’t want to give it a full burger because I’m still working out what that means.  No sense in going all out on the first run, eh?

That’s all for this time.  Tune in this Friday when I cover for King Sheep who is still on the road to his new home in Michigan.