Giles ,'Conversations with Dead People'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
You know how the current teaster ads for Hide & Seek say "Don't let anybody tell you how it ends?"
That's because if they did, no one would go see the thing.
I came very close to walking out at the twist. Unless you have a fetish for seeing small children in danger, don't see the movie. Seriously. It was just depressingly bad.
I have a fetish for being creeped out. And since Dakota Fanning creeps me out even when she's not evil and doesn't have Emily the Strange's hairstyle, I MUST see her as evil!precocious-girl.
And since the twist, theoretically, is near the end of the movie, that means the first bits of the movie will provide creepiness. Which is all I desire.
And since the twist, theoretically, is near the end of the movie
I want a movie where the twist is in the first ten minutes, from which all trailers are made, giving the audience an entirely false impression as to what the movie is actually about.
"Don't miss the last hour-and-a-half!"
I used to think I had the perfect ST:TNG episode: The Enterprise confronts some horrible new adversary - and gets blown-up ten minutes into the show. The remaining 35 minutes is just a black screen.
P-C, I think that would be cool, and would give them major promo points.
P-C, I think that would be cool, and would give them major promo points.
There have been a few TV episode promos that have done this, I think. They take some sort of conflict in the first act and make it the biggest deal ever. And then the first act is over and you realize you have no idea where the rest of the episode is going. It's refreshing.
I wish I could remember specific instances. Because I love watching trailers/promos but I hate being spoiled. The key is to spoil things that aren't integral to the plot.
Personally I'm getting sick of UPN's latest thing where they show about 5-seconds of later in the episode before going to commercial. Thankfully, they only do it once per program but it's still generally more than I need to know about the episode I am currently watching. Tonight's Enterprise was a prime example of it.
TV promos thrive on that cut from an action to a reaction that belongs somewhere completely different place in the timeline -- but they can get away with it. I think a truly misleading/mindfucking trailer would alienate potential ticket buyers.
If they were upfront about it, a "And that's just in the first 20 minutes", I think they'd be able to avoid pissing people off.
I do think that the trend to overly didactic trailers may be a response to people not us who really want to know what they're spending their $8 on. And there are probably more of them than us.