… except for the fact that the T2 trailer gave away the big reveal within the first 30 seconds. Cameron must have been apoplectic.
I believed our potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film. Sequels have to strike a delicate balance between honoring the most loved elements from the first film but also promising to really shake things up and turn them upside down. Our marketing campaign was exactly that promise, and it worked.
https://www.slashfilm.com/1118938/why-james-cameron-spoiled-...
I asked my brother what his reaction was and he said he already knew going in as the trailer had revealed it.
I don't get the point of trailers any more. Most of them just show you the whole movie in 2 minutes.
Saying that, probably the best trailer of recent times was for one of the Godzilla films, which actually gave away very little and just gave you enough of a vibe to make you want to watch it.
I think the most deceptive trailer ever was for The Fountain. You see the trailer and think oh, here's some cool stuff, but it's kind of disjointed, but it's a trailer; but then you watch the movie and it's just as disjointed.
(For those who, like me then, don't know the reference - that's Weyland as in Weyland-Yutani, the evil megacorp that sent the ill-fated crew of the Nostromo to their deaths in the movie Alien. Yes, Prometheus turned out to be an Alien prequel.)
As a result, for any movie that I really care about watching, I now actively avoid almost all trailers. YouTube and TikTok make avoiding spoilers quite difficult, though.
Thankfully, some movies have started to recognize the importance of hiding details, and don't reveal everything in the trailers anymore. Specific examples include Marvel changing the contents of the scenes to hide important details, like which Infinity Stones Thanos had at a given point.
Ray’s family doesn’t really matter narratively, while Luke’s father killing / becoming Darth Vader shifts it away from a story of revenge. Contact is a great example of how subtle this can be with static on the recording vs hours of static on the recording.
At the risk of dating myself, when Empire came out the question of whether Darth Vader was telling the truth was a matter of considerable debate. That summer, at one point, someone at the AI Lab printed out the discussion (from rec.arts.sf-lovers) on the lab's doubtless hugely expensive laser printer and bound it.
I was just reminded up this because a memory popped up on my Facebook feed about totally confusing one of my editors because I apparently made some reference to this in something I wrote and she had never known this was a topic of debate.
Obilgatory reference here to Rick Polito's summary of _Wizard of Oz_: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
Sorely disappointed in the movie. I guess if I expected a Rambo shoot-em-up I would have been satisifed, but a plot based on revenge, with 75-100 on-screen deaths by shooting, drowning, burning, impaling or dismemberment (loss of arm). Torturing of kids, threatening of pregnant women, targeting mothers of new-born animals, burning of innocent villages, scantily clad children, killing animals to make a point (instead of killing the pregnant lady).
There were almost no positive relationships. Parents yelled at eachother, Parents yelled at kids, kids yelled at eachother, people on the same team yelled at eachother. No one showed empathy, love or respectful communication. Out of the 50-75 characters in the movie, I think 4 (including a whale in that number) showed a positive relationship, everyone else was selfish and yelling when others didn't meet their expectations.
I guess I went into it expecting a happy adventure and found a hate-based blood-bath instead.
1/10 happiness/empathy/love 9/10 visuals/graphics.
It sounds like the GP probably hadn't seen an avatar movie before?
The first movie had a romantic couple and lots of characters exploring the beauty of Avatar and discovering it's world.
It felt like that part was missing from Avatar 2.
That's the first 5 minutes so it's not really a spoiler.
There are other humans, but they're just assistants to the revenge-fest.
The main driver of the plot is revenge, the 'we want resources from planet Avatar' isn't a main plot point, or at least it's not what the story is about - it's about one man/Avatar's bloodlust against another Avatar (and kill anyone who gets in the way Rambo style)
Neither human not Avatar groups are functional in a family sense. When there's time to be a loving family, no one is (unless someone died). They do work together during battle, but there's almost no friendship, empathy or unselfish love in the movie.
The four of us who saw it could think of 3 relationships that were positive or had any sort of positive element to them. One relationship was only a nostalgic scene included so it could be referenced at the end of the movie.
On the other hand, there's a hilarious counter example where Alfred Hitchcock "spoils" the whole movie in a 6 minute trailer and I would still want to see the whole movie. It would be awesome to see trailers like this for a recent movie:
Which one? If we're talking about the same trailer (TED 2023), it spoiled nothing for me, leading to a rather awkward cinema date. More details elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315367.
Of course I forget my unassailably genius alternative plot by the time I leave the theater. But I always thought it would be fun to get plot projections from smart / creatives from trailers.
The phantom menace trailer in particular. Man that could have been a great movie. What if the pod racer was for navigating a dangerous raider filled section of tattooine rather than the dumpster fire race.
The phantom menace has all the elements of the first John Carter film plot (yes I know that series underpins most of star wars anyway), but if the phantom menace was some pulp film where the crash landed Jedi had to make their way through a dangerous unfamiliar land while rallying forces to t heir side and encountering Anakin along the way...
Such as shame that was impossible.
Watched a TV show last night which left the "Special Guest Star" to the start of the end credits, so you weren't spoiled at the start with his name.
The streaming platform stuck his picture on the picture for the episode rendering that protection moot.
Especially for action films, there's a lot of temptation to put the "best" action sequences in the trailer.
Such a good scene, and captures a window into the terror and deadly force we add to our own society, just a corner gunshop visit away.
Kinda reminds me of my top-3 favorite TV shows ever, Person of Interest. The protagonist there had a habit of knee-capping the criminals instead of shooting to kill, which seems like the more humane alternative, but the more I think about it, the less I'm sure.
Anyway for the T2 twist, I always just assumed that when T1 was shot, Arnie was kinda unknown, but by T2 he was a pretty big Hollywood action star and couldn't be the bad guy anymore. So they had to wrangle him being the good guy into a sequel if they wanted him back.
A couple of other movies -- again, no trailers -- which made me feel this way were "Aliens" (they are everywhere!) and "Die Hard" (how is this cop going to beat all these bad guys?).
I don't really feel that way anymore with scifi or action movies, and of course much of it has to do with growing up. But I wonder if teenagers feel that way about the current crop of scifi/action movies, do they feel the thrill, do they feel "the good guys can't possibly win", or is this forever lost in modern cinema, what with all the rushed pacing, spoilers and trailers?
Couple more MCU movies and now I know better how this genre works :).
Because apparently audiences are considered too dumb to put 2 + 2 together. FFS