Earlier this week the world got a “sneak peek” at Jurassic World, the fourth Jurassic Park film that unfortunately does NOT involve Velociraptor mercenaries.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “WHAT THE FUCK! HOW IS THIS A THING?!”
I’m not sure I need to say much more, but for the sake of being a complainy, I’m going to.
Trailers are already a problem
At this point everyone should know that movie trailers rarely give you a complete feel for a film. They are just the highlight reels, the jazzy bit of fluff to draw unsuspecting viewers into what could easily end up being a pile of steaming garbage.
At face value there’s no problem with movie trailers. They are just advertisements. They should just be considered ancillary aspects of a film to help general audiences to drive asses into seats at theaters. They are still a necessary part of the advertising of a film.
What isn’t necessary is the massive amounts of pressure to produce a trailer for a film that isn’t coming out for at least another year.
Cue the pre-trailers, aka Teasers:
The above teaser gives absolutely no information, and was release an entire year before the film’s release. It only served to make old transformer fanboys/girls piss themselves with anticipation for something they would be peeing themselves over for another full year. What’s the point??
It also does exactly what it’s annoying name suggests, it teases the audience. It says “Hey assholes, I heard you wanted to get more information about a movie you heard was coming out next year, here’s a vague trailer to make you pee your pants.”
The newest bullshit: Trailer Sneak Peeks
You might have watched that first video in this post. It’s literally a trailer of a trailer. It’s a trailer that says “Hey, don’t forget to come back next week, so you can see a trailer!”
It’s garbage. It’s as bad as Transformers release a year-early trailer for completely different reasons.
Oh and this is the best part of the trailer, the tie-in to do an unrelated activity because of sponsorships and partnerships:
The best part of that screen is the small part underneath, you know, the thing that everyone is actually going to do.
“HEY, GO WATCH FOOTBALL, YOU’LL SEE OUR TRAILER!!! #nbc #nbcfootball #thursdaynightfootballonNBC”
(or you know, wait until it’s on the Internet, which will happen at the exact same time…)
As I mentioned before, the practical use of a movie trailer is to advertise for a general audience who isn’t familiar enough with the film to realize it’s being released in theaters soon. It’s supposed to be an advertisement you notice in passing, maybe it’s shown before another film you’re watching in a theater, maybe it’s a commercial on TV. Or it’s an obnoxious ad in front of your YouTube video.
The above trailer makes no sense. The audience that will go out of their way to see a pre-trailer online is not the general audience that will sit down and watch football on Thanksgiving JUST to see that Jurassic World trailer.
scoff.
On a separate note, I can’t wait to see Jurassic World! It looks so neat! And I’m so glad that they brought B.D. Wong’s character back. He was way more important in the first book and they completely undercut his character in the film.