Planet-man
Well-Known Member
Ebert said:Trailers. Have nothing to do with them. Gene Siskel hated them so much he would stand outside a theater until they were over. If he was already seated in the middle of a crowded theater, he would shout "fire!" or plug his ears and stare at the floor. Trailers love to spoil all the best gags in a comedy, hint at plot twists in a thriller, and make every film, however dire, look upbeat..
I think I've come to a crossroads about movie trailers. I think I might be done with them. For serious this time.
Quantum Of Solace tomorrow night. It's been attached to both the new Star Trek and Watchmen trailers at various screenings, and I'm tantalized by both of them. But at the same time, I really think it's finally time to put the whole idea of trailers to rest. What Ebert says up there is absolutely right....
I'm sick to death of those awkward moments in a comedy where nobody laughs at a very funny joke because everyone's seen it once, twice, six times already, and everybody's just got to grit their teeth and bear it for a few seconds and it sucks.
I'm sick of that feeling when a shot of something HUGE that the editors thought would be too quick in the trailer to catch registers, and even though it lasted less than half a second the significance will be stuck in my head until I see the movie and have one less emotional kick from it(the best recent example would probably be
the split-second shot of the Joker dropping Rachel out the window
so I went into it already emotionally ready for her to die. I know she end up dying THERE after all, but I had already long since gotten over the idea of her dying in the movie because of that shot. Not to mention the whole not-dead-Gordon dialouge fiasco which I thankfully somehow forgot about when I saw the movie, but I know some of you didn't.
I'm sick of knowing more about character's personalities that I should at the start of the film, or that the car their in will be seen flying off a cliff at some point, or that they're acting all chummy with that guy for the first big heist scene of the movie.... won't they be surprised when he turns out to be the film's main villain for the next 100 minutes. Too bad I won't be.
~
You get my point. I don't want to watch movies this way anymore. I just keep thinking back to this story Robert Zemeckis told about the first test screening of Back To The Future where the audience knew NOTHING about the film and when a seventeen-year-old George McFly sits down next to Marty and Marty just gapes at him for ten seconds, he describes how there was this magical sort of ripple that went through the audience as they all suddenly 'got' the movie and it gave them chills.
That's how I want all movies to be. It's obviously not going to be easy and I'll have to keep the mute button handy when I'm watching TV(oh well, I do that anyway), but .... no. That's how I want all movies to be. I owe it to them. What do you think?