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Comment by paozac | Hacker News Reader

Trailers give away the entire film these days. No surprises allowed

I've seen some movies not knowing anything about them by avoiding trailer (this being much easier in the 1990s...) Movies seems to work better that way.

Though it can be jarring: Eg. Silence of the Lambs or Leaving Las Vegas.

The Onion had a good take on it:

https://theonion.com/wildly-popular-iron-man-trailer-to-be-a...

I saw “The Menu” and “Palm Springs” having never even heard of them. I would highly recommend both, especially if you know nothing about them.

Watch Society. Just watch it. Don't Google it!

I always do this, as far as possible.

I avoid trailers like the plague. When reading reviews I'll skip most of it. I want to know the gist of the plot, and I want to know the summary.

I enjoy movies so much more this way. Sure, sometimes I end up watching some duds, but most of the time I'm really engrossed and I love the surprises.

If I watch a trailer, especially the modern 5-minute condensed versions, I find it takes away >90% of the excitement. Doesn't matter if the movie comes out next year, the trailer will come back to me and I will recall the spoiled plot points.

I try to see most movies that way.

You can pick movies by looking up the film in wikipedia and immediately jumping to "critical response" without reading anything else.

(though I should have paid MUCH more attention with megalopolis)

I heard once that this is because the creators of the trailers are separate entities from the movie studio. Their job is to sell the movie. They don't care if they have to spoil the whole movie to get you to buy a ticket to see it.

I think some movies are so crap that they've only got 2 min of good material, so that's what they put in the trailer.

The editors of the trailers should be editors for the movies themselves!

And then you have trailers like Cloud Atlas which are 5 minutes long and don't spoil a single thing about the film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s

That's pretty impressive.

Haven't seen the film, but read the book. I got what was being depicted (mostly), but yeah, it shows without revealing.

It helps that the story doesn't revolve strictly around action and combat, which many blockbusters do these days.

I can usually tell within the first third of a trailer whether I'd like to watch it. In those cases I don't finish the trailer. They give everything away.

It’s been like that for my whole adult life (20 years). When I used to go to theaters, I would wait outside until the trailers stopped.

Knowing nothing about what I’m about to watch is my favorite way.

One thing I always wished was possible is to see The Worlds End without any pre-knowledge. The trailer completely gave away the premise.

I have never seen it or the trailer. Thank you for the recommendation!

I saw that without any spoilers and it was one of the weirdest movie experiences I’ve ever had.

The worst are the trailers for really bad movies. I recall one where the trailer was literally the only good scenes in the movie.

Yeah. Sometimes I've wanted to check out a new film on Netflix. I watch the tiny trailer that runs in the app, while I figure out whether it is worth my time.

Trailer ends, and I know all I need to know about the film. The plot is known, the story is more or less obvious. Pick another film, repeat, same thing.

Result: do something else entirely, or watch comfort series like Star Trek, where it doesn't matter that I remember the plotlines.

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