Trailer Trashing

This was to be a rant on movie trailers.

The reason for the rant was remembering that four different people asked me if I had seen the Star Wars® trailer in one day. I thought they were talking about a sci-fi road show. But no, they were talking about those annoying previews you have to wade through before you can watch your chosen flick.

If you have rented your chosen flick, you have the option of fast forwarding through them, although if I am watching a video with my significant other, I must sit through them. I have no idea why. He can channel surf at the speed of light, but he can't bear to fast forward past movie trailers.

I snagged the fifth person who asked me if I had seen the Star Wars® trailer and asked him what I was missing. Quite a lot apparently. This was a trailer for the long-awaited, George Lucas prequel (and was that even a WORD before this?) This summer we shall hopefully find out how the hell Luke’s father landed on the dark side in the first place. What amazed me about all of this though was the hype over a trailer! It's a trailer, people! A two-minute sliced and diced Reader’s Digest version of the film for speed viewers! Everyone was acting like it was the Second Coming! IT’S A TRAILER!

I was going to type up one of my patented hissy fits on how ridiculous our society has become, how sound-byte addicted we must be to live in a world where a movie trailer made news headlines. I decided it might be a good idea to view the trailer before I trashed the trailer, so I did a search. What I typed was “Star Wars Trailer.” What I got was an education.

I found a million sites where I could view “the” trailer. I also found sites on “trailers” alone. I sat here amazed and half appalled that there were people in this universe who dedicated server space to movie trailers. Then some other sites I have seen floated through my brain and I decided it could be much worse.

The first place I surfed to was Movie-List, billed as “the net’s most updated movie trailer site.” This is indeed a most comprehensive site. It is updated daily, has a coming-soon section and you may even order CD’s of trailers. I visited their Top Ten List, which (not surprisingly) had Mr. Lucas’s baby as No. 1. Movie-List even has a search engine for that hard to locate movie trailer that you cannot live without seeing. I did enjoy the Academy Award List. They had trailers for some of the winning documentaries and foreign films that will never make their way to Ruralsville, where I reside.

“Good Grief! I thought, The way this is going, I'm likely to find Academy Awards just for trailers!” Well, whaddaya know, but the next site I visited had just that. Hollywood Online makes the point that trailers do not get the respect they deserve. (Oops...guilty!) They feel a trailer can make or break a film. “Most movie trailers cost only about $300,000 to make even though they are the second most effective way of marketing a film. This is despite the fact that last year's ten most advertised films spent $21.8 million on average to promote themselves. Only television advertising is more effective, and the same ten films spent an average of $17.7 million on that. So what sounds like the better deal? $17.7 million or $300,000? The answer is obvious. Movie trailers rule!”

It was in a MUCH more respectful state of mind that I entered their Golden Hitch Awards. Trailers were voted on by “we the viewers” and won in categories such as Funniest, (Something About Mary - a movie where I felt the trailer was better than the film) and Most Stylish. (Blade - the only award THAT movie will ever win)

I was getting the feeling that I was in the minority when it came to my opinion on trailers. I felt downright shrimpy by the time I got to the Trailer Park, a huge site which claims it is the oldest active movie trailer site, with traffic of 50,000 visits in it’s first six months. The Trailer Park is not tacky as its name might imply, but a well designed, easy to navigate site with thousands of links to any trailer you'd care to see. You can search by studio, country or alphabetically. You can even order trailers, soundtracks and reference books at their online store.

It is a much chastened trailer trasher that signs off for now. I have learned that somewhere out there is people who are thrilled to watch those two-minute wonders. I don’t think I will ever be one of them, but I resolve to give them the respect they deserve from this point on. At the very least, I vow that I will not attempt to wrestle the remote away to fast forward through them.

- Tam

Trailers: The Good and the Bad?

The Phantom Menace The Internet is for Movie Fans Star Wars® Movie-List Hollywood Online The Trailer Park

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