Trailers & Spoilers

We recently marked the thirtieth anniversary of Back To The Future. And in case you haven’t checked your Facebook feed recently, it’s also the year Marty McFly travels to at the beginning of Back To The Future Part II. I remember that was one of my first cinema experiences. When it was released, I had just fallen in love with going to the movies. My favorite part about the whole experience was before the movie started, watching the trailers. Getting a quick glimpse at movies recently finished, in production, or sometimes still in development.  With all the best shots, stunts, and one-liners on display.  And to my surprise- at the end of Back To The Future Part II, after a title card promised “To Be Concluded", there was a trailer for Back To The Future Part III, the final installment.

Almost twenty-six years later, trailers have only grown in popularity. We now have a website we can visit where anyone can upload digital footage they shot on their phone of a movie trailer that premiered at a comic convention. Six things in that sentence would have blown my 5-year old mind.

"Website? Digital footage? You have cameras on your phones? Trailer- you mean preview, right?  They have premieres? Why would they show them at comic conventions?”

A quick search of YouTube this week yields hours of trailer video recently uploaded. Comic Con just finished and fans in attendance had their phones ready. They uploaded the latest trailers premiering and you can log on to see some of the shakiest, grainiest, poorly shot footage of a theatre screen- usually reversed because being a nerd doesn’t mean you know how to flip an image on your phone. 

Those videos, collectively, received almost as many viewers and comments as the officially released trailers on studio controlled channels. Add to that, the trend of YouTube channels devoted solely to showing people watching trailers and making comments; if you haven’t heard about this YouTube craze until now, let me apologize for introducing you to another reason to hate the internet.

The market is saturated with more trailers than ever before.  There are teasers, then first trailers, and then second trailers.  There are trailers for tv shows now.  Trailers for video games.  Commercials made to look like trailers.  Even political candidates have trailers.

It’s amazing how popular trailers have become when you think of how often fans on the internet cry “spoiler alert”.  According to every forum you stumble upon, the greatest threat to people on the internet isn’t Anonymous, ISIS, or loneliness, it’s spoilers. Spread all the misinformation you want regarding history or politics, but don’t you dare post what happened to a fictional character from a TV program that aired last month without first saying “***SPOILER ALERT*****”.

But the trailer is a spoiler.  Set photos, articles, comic con panels with big announcements- all spoilers. They might not spoil everything, but they spoil a lot of character and story details. They give away enough information to make fans speculate and make connections, ultimately drawing conclusions that may or may not end up being true in the final film, show, or comic.  That’s what trailers are designed to do- to tease and titillate and answer some questions while sparking others.  

Fans may say they hate spoilers, but certainly they love to be teased. They love having just enough to be able to talk about and to wonder and to dream about later on. They want to have something to discuss with their friends. And studios have perfected the right amount of information to give. Trailers are now a science.  Loud music, big effects, familiar actors.  Doing a sequel?  Add just a taste of nostalgia with an old, beloved character.  Doing a reboot? Do the exact opposite of the original. Unless the original was good, in which case copy it down to the letter and then double it.

One of the biggest trends for music in trailers right now is using covers of old hit songs but slowed down as if to have a new take.  As if viewers will say, “Wow, I haven’t heard Who Let The Dogs Out in a while but Adele really puts a fresh spin on it."

 

But there is always one person who has to be the downer- “Well, you can’t judge the movie by the trailer.” Actually, hypothetical guy I just created, that’s the purpose of a trailer.  You are supposed to judge the movie and decide if you want to see it or not.  If a movie has a trailer with predictable, low brow humor, and someone says “well, you have to see it- it’s funnier than the trailer makes it out to be.”  That’s too bad.  They should have put funnier jokes in the trailer.

 

If you’re like me, your Netflix has a queue longer than the lifeboats on the Titanic. Then HBO, Amazon, Hulu, and Crackle had to get into the mix. Humans only have 18 waking hours in the day, two of them shouldn’t be wasted on seeing if a film is really as bad as its advertisements make it appear. If the comedy looks to appeal to the lowest common denominator, I’m going to assume it’s for the Hangover crowd and not the In The Loop crowd. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but you can judge a book based on a page you read. Especially if it looks like that page was hastily copied and pasted from another book you hated.

This is how I know I am no longer that 5-year old kid at Back To The Future Part II. I don’t care about trailers anymore. They are only there for me to judge which movies I will definitely not give my time. Sadly, that’s most movies. Rarely do I find that there is a trailer that wants to separate itself from the pack. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not nostalgic for a time gone by. Some films I thought were great once I now realize are kind of terrible. And I’m not cynical about the current state of films.  In many ways, movies have gotten much better and I’m optimistic about their future. 

The problem I think is that we have so much content competing with other content drowning in a larger sea of other content, some of which is just commenting on other content.  And the movie market has gotten to a place where it doesn’t so much care about the finished product it produces so much as it cares about how that product can be sold. The marketing of the film; the reactions to the trailers. That’s priority number one. Studios, like all businesses, don’t want to take risks.  And things that are trending don’t seem like risks. A fan base doesn’t seem like a risk because the studio can basically sell the product before there is a product.

Before Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale completed their Back To The Future trilogy, they forced the studio to take a risk. The studio had to commit to making two sequels back-to-back, at the same time. That meant if Part II flopped, Part III would probably be an even bigger flop. The studios were not happy, but they conceded. They took a risk. It wasn’t a great risk, but by doing it this way, audiences were treated to a little surprise trailer at the end of Part II. And now studios commit to trilogies regularly. It’s not risky anymore. That’s why we got three Hobbit films shot together and now six new Star Wars films are in the pipeline.

It just makes me really sad to realize now that my Back To The Future trailer experience, one of my favorite memories from childhood, was the beginning of this new era in which we live. A era in which the trailer is king. Kids get to have my Back To The Future trailer experience everyday. It’s not special anymore. And there are more spoilers than ever now and very little risk taking in films.  Maybe 5-year old me would enjoy this, but 30-year old me is bored. 

Fifty Shades & The aTV Fest

Even as the William Goldman “nobody knows anything”-quote about Hollywood slips further into cliche status with the passing years, we get reminded of how true it remains. Just think about this: the biggest selling novel of our time may turn out to be a book by a first time writer based on an erotic fan fiction of a popular Young Adult series.  It’s weird, but this week will see the release of the much-anticipated film version of Fifty Shades Of Grey.  Who could have guessed that a novel most critics labeled “poorly written”, “laughable”, and “a sad joke” would be so wildly successful?

Even the film is successful, although it has yet to be released.  Fandango has listed it as it's fourth largest ticket pre sale and it’s on-track to become the biggest R-rated film in the site’s history.  Two sequels are already on their way to the big screen (with the third likely to be split into two films, if Hollywood keeps up it’s trend of squeezing every bit of life out of a franchise).  And E.L. James has promised another novel.  We don’t have to wait until tomorrow’s release, Fifty Shades the movie is already a winner.

But how did Hollywood get around that pesky problem of not knowing anything?  Well, they did their homework and they planned ahead.  After setting a record for the fastest selling novel of all time, Fifty Shades Of Grey got a movie release date set in November of 2013.  That means fifteen months in advance, Universal Pictures made a play to own the 2015 Valentine’s Day weekend box-office.  They left nothing to chance.  They knew people wanted it and they planned to give it to them.

Jodie Foster explained recently at the Athena Film Festival that she's decided to work in TV lately because “That’s where story is now.” She said that the Hollywood studios directive now was to "create franchise content...So because there is very little support in the lower ranges, it means that story is going to cable and to TV and I think eventually that’s where it will be.”

Certainly, movies are franchised.  Fifty Shades is just one of many examples where that’s true.  But let’s not kid ourselves, TV is franchised as well.  From it’s Marvel and DC Comic shows to the countless number of adapted British series.  TV is creating new series around popular movies (12 Monkeys, About A Boy, Fargo), books (Man Seeking Woman), plays (The Odd Couple), telenovelas (Jane The Virgin), and even old TV series (Hawaii Five-0).

Maybe Foster was talking specifically about the TV projects she’s recently worked on, House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black- the former based on a British show and the latter based on a popular memoir.  Both shows were also well established programs by the time she came to them. Most would argue, those are franchises.

To the other part of Foster's statement regarding the story being in TV and cable now- maybe the longer story.  The only difference between the stories in movies and the stories in TV shows is the length.  TV can tell longer stories.  They can make an audience invest more time and emotion into a single character.  So when a character is killed off, the emotional impact feels greater, just like in a book series.  A good example of this can be seen in the hugely popular franchise/TV show Game Of Thrones.  TV is thriving on long-form stories in a way that soap operas have for years. Drawing stories out with cliff hangers and teases and surprise twists.  But making stories longer isn't necessarily making them better and the idea that TV has taken the story from films is ridiculous.  Don't forget that Hollywood's two biggest films this year, Avengers Age of Ultron and Star Wars Epsiode 7, are being helmed by seasoned TV writers.

At the aTV Fest in Atlanta this past weekend, I wanted to figure out why TV shows are so popular right now.  John Ridley observed perhaps TV's greatest development.  Promoting his new show American Crime, the show runner spoke about how TV isn't so much diverse now as it is reflective. He was pointing to networks producing content with more minorities, created by more minorities. Obviously, he’s right: Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish, How To Get Away With Murder, Empire are all just some of the shows getting high praise and ratings.

But while TV is diverse culturally, it’s no more diverse in content than it’s ever been.  There are more shows, but they’re just more of the same we’ve seen before.  This is strange because usually more competition creates an environment of greater risk taking.  But although competition is high right now with cable networks like HBO, FX, AMC, and the CW growing in strides, not to mention Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix producing original programs, TV isn’t really taking chances on new subject matters or storylines.  The risks they are taking are completely based on ethnicity.

What networks today are doing is really not much different from what they did back in the 60s.  They are creating shows that shadow other show on competing networks. Like how Bewitched shadowed I Dream Of Jeannie, The Mindy Project is basically a shadow of The New Girl.  The shows could switch writers and most viewers wouldn't really notice.  The glowing difference in these shows isn't the story or comedy, it's the race of the lead characters- Zooey Deschanel is the quirky American girl next door, Mindy Kaling is the quirky Indian-American girl next door.

If you need further proof that TV stories are more of the same, just look at how they still rehash popular shows that have recently left the air.  You can watch Backstroke if you’re missing House. And if you're missing Breaking Bad, well, now you can watch Better Call Saul.

At this point I’d like to point out how extraordinary it is that episodic narrative shows are still with us. If you’ll remember, there was a brief time when we were told that “sitcoms” and “serials" were on their way out. This was when Honey Boo Boo and the Jersey Shore were being herald as the future, because reality TV was cheap and easy to make and everyone was talking about them at that time. And while we will forever be infected by the low bearing fruit genre they spewed the Kardashians all over our television screens, it turns out the situation wasn’t as dire as everyone had predicted for the episodic narrative show. In fact, it’s now more popular than ever, proving once again Goldman’s adage.

And how did the networks bring back the episodic narrative show?  They listened to what people said they wanted and they gave it to them.  A boring answer, but it was the viewer that told them they valued more culturally diverse content.  Viewers don’t really care about new stories.  Maybe they say they do.  But it turns out they’re happy with dressed up versions of old shows or some popular franchise that is already familiar.

TV and films are the same in this respect.  Neither of them is in the story business per se, but rather in the give-the-people-what-they-want business.  It was the culture that asked Hollywood for a Fifty Shades movie.  So Hollywood is giving it to them.  Not because they think it’s an original story, they know it’s a poorly written fan fiction.  And it’s not because they believe in the writer.  I mean, her original pen name was Snowqueen’s Icedragon, for God’s sake.  Do you realize how fucking ridiculous that is?

The studios are making the Fifty Shades Of Grey movie because there is zero risk involved.  It is already a success.  Even though early critic reviews of the film are not good and it’s Rotten Tomatoes rating is 44 percent, 87 percent still say they're going to see it.  And you can bet that TV is ready to follow in Hollywood’s footsteps.  They’re probably looking for a Fifty Shades show runner at this moment.  And viewers will likely tune in.  Because it’s not just TV networks and Hollywood studios who don’t know anything, audiences can be pretty clueless as well.

American Sniper and The Super Bowl

A lot of speculation is going on as to why American Sniper has done so well at the box office. It’s supporters claim that it is because the film celebrates our veterans like no film has before, and/or it’s an excellent piece of filmmaking.  It’s detractors say it is because Americans are by-and-large angry and/or savages and/or stupid.

These arguments don't seem to get close to the actual reason this movie is defying expectations.  Firstly, we have already had a movie that celebrates Iraq War veterans while acknowledging the PTSD they acquire; it was called The Hurt Locker and the Oscars awarded it Best Picture in 2010. To the excellent piece of filmmaking argument, I would direct you to any scenes in American Sniper involving the clearly plastic, lifeless baby.  And speaking to Americans being stupid, angry savages, I’d say that is a gross overgeneralization and not worthy my time.

For me, I thought American Sniper was decent and average.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically Dirty Harry with a sniper rifle.  It was nothing to write home about.  It could have been a major film to write home about had the filmmakers been bold enough to forego dramatizing the record holding sniper’s many kills (previous sniper films already have done that to death- no pun intended) and instead had more than two scenes at a VA hospital.  Maybe even give Sienna Miller new dialogue rather than just have her repeat “Don’t go” over and over again.  But I digress.

If you really want to understand American Sniper’s success, I think you have to look at when it made its money.  American Sniper was released, wide, on January 16.  It has made its astonishing gross in the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday.

Just like American Sniper’s success, people have speculated how the NFL is now more successful than ever.  The sport is thriving despite a year dripping with controversy including domestic violence, child abuse, and most recently cheating.  The NFL Commissioner admitted “It’s been a tough year.” He did not clarify what was tough though.  One can only assume they are running out of places to put money, even after stashing a few bills in the “No More” Campaign ads.

The NFL has it’s own PTSD problem it’s dealing with, but it goes by a different set of letters- CTE.  CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and it’s been found in the brains of many football-

What’s that?  I’m ruining Super Bowl Sunday?

Okay.  You're right.  My apologies.  But for a full list of players past and present who have been diagnosed with CTE, they actually have their very our Wikipedia page listing all- 

Okay, okay, okay. I'll get off it.  The point I'm trying to make is that the Super Bowl is a celebration just like American Sniper is a celebration. Super Bowl Sunday is a day where Americans gather together to eat tasty fried foods while staring at a TV screen in which a war is being fought.  Not a literal war, a figurative one.  No participants are going to die, probably.  Of course everything comes with a risk.  But these guys are trained professionals at the top of their game.  Each player is a single link in a chain of command that works tirelessly towards one goal- victory.  It may be violent, but war is hell.

I mean, God forbid, if one of the football players actually did die, it most likely will not be out on the field.  It will be years later after his career is over.  And if it turns out that a medical condition brought on by his profession caused great suffering and ultimately his death, Americans would honor him.  In fact, if he happens to hold some great record, we will probably make a movie about him.

Sure, there will be those that cry we are all responsible for creating the conditions that led to his tragic end, but the movie will mainly focus on his glory on the field.  It will not show his horrific end, but we'll get a title card that says what happened.  The movie probably won’t even mention PTSD until the last thirty minutes...I mean CTE.  Sorry, I must have been thinking about that scene at the end of American Sniper where everyone gathers at the Dallas Cowboy football stadium to honor Chris Kyle.

Seriously though, our veterans deserve better than what we give them.  I am all for reconfiguring our defense budget so that we make fewer unused tanks and guns, and more, better equipped VA hospitals.  I’d vote for a second Veterans Day on the calendar if we all agreed it would raise more awareness.  The defenders of our country deserve to be honored, but they deserve to not be put in harms way unless it is absolutely necessary and a last resort after all diplomacy has been deployed.

Similarly, I don’t think it’s necessary that football players put their mental health in jeopardy for a few months of entertainment.  I know they make more money than our war veterans- which is fucking ridiculous, by the way.  But we are basically creating a new kind of veteran with mental problems that we will have to take care of in the years to come.  And so far the NFL is doing about as good as job taking care of it's fallen players as the US Government does caring for it's veterans.  

And what is the cause that football players are fighting for- buffalo wings.... Go Daddy commercials... Billionaire owners... Teams with offensive names who refuse to change...

I just don’t think it's worth it.

The Golden Globes and Biopics

By now, we all know awards are bullshit.  Hollywood congratulates itself in a 3-hour star-studded ceremony which is actually just a 3-hour mega movie trailer designed to sell us what the studios believe to be their most artistic achievement of the year.  In the end, even the winners don’t really matter because it’s about which company campaigned the hardest for it’s nominees.  The best you can hope for is enjoying the hosts ripping on the celebrities, but most likely they are just there to begin pushing a movie they have coming out next year around this time.  My point is the whole thing is one big publicity stunt that is meaningless to avid movie watchers who still genuinely regard film as a high art despite Hollywood’s need to constantly self-fellate on primetime television to move merch.

So, now that we’ve got that out of the way.  The 2015 Golden Globes left me a little hopeful for film, and here is why:

Biopics.  Hollywood has given us eight of them in the last month (Selma, The Intimidation Game, Theory Of Everything, Foxcatcher, Big Eyes, American Sniper, Unbroken, & Wild).  We get it.  This is award season bait.   Play a real person with a sad story and a couple of non-fiction books written about them and you’ll probably get a nomination.  We’re supposed to believe that your performance merits more than others because you weren't just getting inside a character’s head, you were getting inside a real human being.  

The common belief is if you don’t have “Starring Meryl Streep” on your movie poster, your second best chance at an award is to have "Based on a True Story”.  The problem is that these “true story” films and their blatant aspiration for award recognition have become so obvious and ridiculous that audiences are taking notice.  Nearly every biographical film this season is coming under fire for historical discrepancies (some warranted, some not).

The Globes chose to over look all of those films save for Selma’s original song and Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking performance (because let’s face it, he’s hot and famous paraplegic portrayals always seem amazing, right?).  Instead the Award show honored more independent films.  Film that seemed like out-of-the-box fair- Boyhood, Birdman, Grand Budapest, and Whiplash.  Each of these films has biographical elements though.  Boyhood chronicles 12-years in the life of a boy and his family.  Birdman perhaps unintentionally draws parallels between the career of it’s star Michael Keaton and the main character of the film.  Grand Budapest is told in a pseudo-biographical manner recounting the life of a fictitious concierge during a period of time that could be interrupted as the first World War. And Whiplash loosely recounts the writer-director’s time not becoming a proper musician.

My point is that none of those films will come under fire for historical inaccuracies because they didn’t need “Based On A True Story”.  “Based On A True Story” was unnecessary.  And yet the filmmakers knew audiences wanted something that felt like real life.  According to this year’s Globes, “Based On A True Story” didn’t work in its sheepish attempt to get statues (again except for Redmayne, but remember he’s a good looking white dude playing a genius white dude that defied the entire medical community, so let’s just drop it already).

I don’t think I'm alone when I say I love a good bio film.  But the problem is I’ve seen very few because a good bio film to me is one without all of the historical inaccuracies.

Sorry, what’s that you say?  It’s just a movie?  They had to condense and composite some stuff to make everything fit?  My smartass reply is usually “Maybe you’re just not a very good filmmaker.”  But my more constructive reply is, “Fine. You could try to make it two films, or focus on a shorter period of time with this one.  But as long as you don’t change the important facts of what historians actually know happened, knock yourself out.”

I say this because I go to a biographical film hoping to get biographical facts, not to see some filmmaker's desperate attempt to win a meaningless award.  Sometimes I feel I am alone in this sentiment.  That I am the only one that cares that “Based On A True Story” isn’t just award bait, but is a serious attempt to get what we know as the historical record portrayed correctly in this great medium that we call film.  And I am glad at least that the Golden Globes last night didn’t seem to take the bait.

I must say that at this point I have not seen Selma.  I am seeing it today and I’m looking forward to it’s historical accuracy because of all the articles I have read defending it from detractors.  But the unfortunate reality is that after the screening, I will be doing a lot of research to verify the facts I’ve just been presented under the guise of “Based On True Story”.  I will have to know, for my own enjoyment, that those plot points weren’t just plot points but were, in fact, true.  And this isn’t the Selma filmmakers' fault, but the fault of every filmmaker who has attempted to dramatize history to win a golden statue.  It’s the fault of awards shows that continue to shower films with awards solely because they brag “Based On A True Story”.

And that’s why I would like to propose The Biographical Accuracy Award.  This award will be given out to the biographical narrative feature film with the greatest amount of accuracy and the least amount of award show pander.  Foxcatcher, if Mark Shultz’s allegations are true, you are disqualified from this award.  Theory of Everything, you’re going to have to make do with Redmayne’s award because your make-up department didn’t even attempt to age the two lead actors- Wait, I guess you thought that maybe Redmayne wouldn’t have been as handsome if you aged him so you were probably crossed; "do I go after the Accuracy Award or the Popularity Award".  I see the flaw in my logic now.

Yeah, award shows are just bullshit.