--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name's Sean Rameswaram, and I'm an elder millennial, which means I like movies. So obviously I like Jordan Peele movies, so when I saw the teaser trailer for Nope, I was like, yup. It was all the desert landscapes from my youth, existential questions. What's a bad miracle? Intriguing visuals. Think I'll work for that? I had no idea what the movie was about, and I couldn't wait to see it. Then, months later when I went to see Everything Everywhere all at once, they showed a much longer trailer that gave away everything. The movie was definitely about aliens. They showed the UFOs multiple times. I was really sad. I wanted to be surprised. The trailer felt more like a spoiler.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, trailers are getting worse. They're annoying, they're too long, they give away the entire movie. If you watch them on YouTube, there's even a trailer for the trailer sometimes. Yuck! But don't take it from me. Take it from Vox's film critic, Alyssa Wilkinson. She just wrote a whole piece titled, Movie Trailers Are Getting Worse. Stop Watching Them.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Because I find movie trailers really frustrating. You know, this actually started because I rarely watch trailers. And one reason is that I often see the movies before a trailer has been cut. So I might see a movie at a festival. If I watch it at a press screening, they don't run trailers before press screening. So I don't have a lot of opportunities to watch trailers unless I physically click upon them. And I just don't really have a reason to do that.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Help us diagnose the myriad problems with trailers. I mean, like, how many are there? Is there a comprehensive list? Did you make a list? Sort of. I can think of three buckets. So we have one bucket, which I think is maybe like bait and switch or false advertising, which is where the trailer itself doesn't match the movie. And maybe it matches what the studio thinks people want to see. And as someone has pointed out, you don't get a refund on a movie ticket right after you see the movie. So once they've sold the movie ticket, they're good, right? But it doesn't seem like it's working right now.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I was talking to some people who were describing what they thought Steven Spielberg's new movie The Fablemans was about. And they were like, oh, another corny movie about the magic of the movies and how awesome movies are. And I was like, what are you talking about? I've seen this movie. That's exactly what the movie looks like if you watch the trailer. It really is. And I just was totally baffled until someone said, well, you know, like the trailer. Movies are dreams. So I went and watched it and I was so confused about what I was watching. That you never forget.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: This is a trailer that sells me a movie I don't want to see either. But I also knew, having seen The Fablemans, that it's a movie about feeling conflicted, about your parents, about this sort of rocky childhood experience and trying to kind of come to terms with it. And about kind of learning that you can't ever come home again. You know, all these things that don't really have anything to do with the magic of the movies.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And so I started watching other trailers for other movies that I had seen, like James Gray's Armageddon Time. The United States stands for an idea whose time is now. Ronald Reagan will win tonight. What a schmuck. It's a very conflicted movie, in some ways a lot like The Fablemans, which is him grappling with privilege and racism in his childhood and not coming to any conclusions at all. And then I watched the trailer, and it's Green Book Redux. Next time those schmucks say anything bad about those kids, you're going to say something. You're going to be a match, okay? Firm handshake. Okay, give me a hug.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: You know, another good example is the film She Said, which was another one of my top films of the year. It's about the New York Times reporters who broke the story about Harvey Weinstein. The only way these women are going to go on the record is if they all jump together. I've read the book. The book was phenomenal. I went and saw the movie and I was so excited because the movie really captured the kind of plodding work of reporting a story. It's very ambiguous and sort of conflicted at the end about you know this work was necessary but it's not triumphant or triumphalist or anything like that.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And you watch the trailer and you're like oh this is just a movie about like how awesome reporters think they are you have to imagine that every call you make is being recorded and you're being followed can you imagine how many harvies there are out there you want to get me killed do you wish you hadn't signed up for this story? Do you? No. I don't want to watch that and I am a reporter.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So all of this kind of made me start to think, what is going on with movie trailers? And, you know, and I said to my editors, I think I want to write about how we should stop watching them. Okay, so the Oscar bait and switch is like the Fableman's Armageddon time. Maybe she said those three that you just described. Yeah And then there another category which mainly I think applies to comedy which is where you get the distinct impression that every good joke in the movie is in the trailer Oh yeah As if they don't trust you to come in and laugh at a movie or maybe they just don't have enough jokes in the movie for you to watch.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And, you know, you can't tell that until you actually go and watch the movie. But it is very disappointing when you go to a movie and realize, oh, all three jokes in this movie were in the trailer. So a good example of this is Ticket to Paradise with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Oh, yeah. Oh, come on. You've got to be kidding me. Excuse me, ma'am. I need to sit somewhere else. We used to be married. Worst 19 years of my life. We were only married for five. I'm counting the recovery.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: Which is sort of a pleasant, warm bath of a movie that is nowhere near as funny as it needs to be. And hasn't really done that well at the box office because of it. And when I went back and watched the trailer, I said, indeed, the three funny jokes in this movie are in the trailer. Mom, Dad, this is G'day. I'm supposed to ask you, G'day. Hey. You learned that to make me look bad. You don't need my help there.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And then I think there's this third bucket where there are movies that are very, shall we say, odd, right? So there's this movie Bones and All starring Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell. It's directed by Luca Guadagnino who made movies like Call Me By Your Name. It's a movie about two teenage cannibals living on the edge of society. Classic. I smelt you. I didn't know I could do that. I thought I was the only one. I don't want to hurt anybody. Famous last words.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: There are trailers for it where you don't even know that there's cannibalism in the movie, which seems like something you might want to at least hint at with an audience, because, you know, some people don't want to show up and watch that. Or the trailer for Noah Baumbach's film White Noise, which is based on the Don DeLillo book from the 80s. They're calling it the airborne toxic event. Man won't come this way. Will we have to leave our home? Course not. How do you know? I just know. Okay, what if it's dangerous? Evacuate all places of residence.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's a very weird movie, but if you watch the trailer, you think it's about kind of like a happy-go-lucky family drama with some excitement in it. It's much weirder than that. And I feel kind of bad for the person who sails in thinking they're about to get a fairly conventional film and is actually going to end up watching this one. But again, it's, I think, the studio's saying, well, we know what people want, and we're going to sell it to them. And then it turns out, you know, you might get something different.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And what I think that does is dismantle trust in movies altogether and convince people that, well, every time I go to the movies, I'm getting something different than I thought I was. Why should I even bother? I can just wait and watch it at home when I can turn it off if I'm bored by it five minutes in or if somebody starts, you know, eating somebody's arm. And that wasn't really what I was up for today.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But we should acknowledge, Alyssa, that a lot of people love trailers. What would you have people do if not watch trailers, if they're trying to get Amp to go see a movie? So there are other ways to find out about a movie, right? You can look at reviews. Now, maybe that sounds self-serving since I write a lot of reviews, but honestly, you know, one reason that people write reviews is to help you make a decision about whether you want to see a movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It's not the only reason, but it is a reason. And I think a great way to do this is to find like two or three critics who kind of write with maybe a similar sensibility to your own and then read them and let them help you decide what you want to see. Or another way is to plug in that information to Google and see, oh, what has this person done? What has this director made? Who's this screenwriter and what have they done?
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: This is how I determine what I'm going to see and what I'm going to invest my time in seeing, which again happens before the trailer is cut. The big problem we have right now is that the trailers are selling you a different movie than the one you're actually going to go see. So this may be a more accurate way to get a sense of what the movie is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I appreciate your alternatives, but I also just want to acknowledge the reality, which is that they're all far less fun and arguably more time consuming than just watching a trailer. I agree with that. At the same time, there's this real weird saminess to all trailers these days. In a world. In a world. World. World. Like, I feel like I could watch 10 to 15 trailers and see sort of the same thing over and over.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's not like a lot of inventiveness to them. They all are mini movies at this point. That's kind of the mode of trailer making that we have now, where they're going to tell you kind of what the first and second acts are and bring you right up to the climax and then not tell you how the problem is fixed. And there's going to probably be like a sound cue that's like, you know, or like some big music. Thank you, Hans Zimmer. Yes, exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And even Hans Zimmer knows that this is a problem and has talked about it in interviews. People are talking about the bram sound, the low brass. That's the sound of inception. What's the most resilient parasite? An idea. And so at some point, my eyes glaze over. And maybe the only information I have gotten from the trailer is that this one stars Brad Pitt and this one stars Adam Driver.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you and I were talking about the movie Babylon, which I really enjoyed. And you said, isn't it a movie about jazz? And I said, no, it's not at all. But you can watch the trailer and see why you would think that was true. It's the most magical place in the world. OK, so you're making the case, even though the odds are long, that you're going to convince people to stop watching trailers and instead just read reviews and do research.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes. I mean, of course, this is hyperbole. I don't really think that you're bad if you watch trailers, although the entire internet has become convinced of that since the piece came out. So I am not alone in this. And I also think that we are well within our rights to complain about the trailers we're given if we feel like they're selling us a false bill of goods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because it is, at the end of the day, studio executives who are making those decisions about what goes into a trailer. The director does not make the trailer. I was on the phone with an extremely, like, maybe the most prominent comedy director in Hollywood, and he was telling me stories about fighting with the studio to not imply certain things about the movie in the trailer that weren't actually served up by the movie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the very week, if not the very day that your piece published on Vox.com, a trailer came out for a movie called Cocaine Bear. Yes. That was so fun that it really made the opposite argument It did A bear did cocaine Of course you know you can find an exception to every rule And so I was re the trailer for Top Gun Maverick And I was like, okay, here's like a solid trailer that tells you what the movie is about. Has like some musical cues from the original Top Gun. Has Tom Cruise saying some stuff. Like it's selling me Top Gun Maverick.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would not be disappointed if I went to see Top Gun Maverick after seeing that trailer. The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your kind is headed for extinction. Maybe so, sir. But not today. On the other hand, like, if you're going to go see Top Gun Maverick, it's probably not because of your trailer. Probably not. It's probably because you want to see Top Gun Maverick.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing I love about Cocaine Bear's trailer is that it's off the wall. It's like surprising and weird, and I am not at all convinced that that is far from the tone of the actual movie. But even if it was, it's just like a very funny trailer. It kind of seems like the thing that stays with a man forever. One thing that is true is it's kind of horror adjacent. And the one genre that seems to get really great trailers, as I was thinking about it, is horror.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Horror films, they have like a plan, you know, and they go in and they kind of make you jump and make you freak out and make you kind of want to see what's behind that door. And they create a sense of intrigue and tension that most movie trailers fail to do these days. I have like a fourth alternative that I think you might hate, but I want to throw it out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What if people like you, the critics, started reviewing the trailers so people like us, the viewers, knew which ones were good beforehand and which ones we should definitely avoid? There is kind of a thriving industry of this on YouTube called trailer reactions. But they're long. They're like way longer than the trailer. I need it short. If someone's not going to read my movie review, they're probably not going to read my trailer review.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's that's simply fine. I just want like the Rotten Tomatoes score or whatever at the bottom of the trailer. Like 89% of critics think you should watch this trailer. And they're like, boom, I can go in. When we're back, I'm going to ask Alyssa why trailers are getting so bad. That's in a minute on Today Explained.
--:-- [Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies. They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model. According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.]
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Our heroes feel like the best part of us. And stories feel perfect and powerful. Because here, they are. Today Explained, we're back. Alyssa, why are trailers getting so bad? This is a subjective opinion, of course, but I think they've been getting worse for a while. Ever since we moved into this era where trailers basically are mini-movies and they're trying to cram too much into the trailer.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And this is actually a really good reason that teasers are often better than trailers. I think watch teasers, they're great. They're like a minute long. They're alluding to what's going to happen in the movie and they're very intriguing and then you can just don't bother watching the trailer you got what you needed from that but of course the biggest reason is that the theatrical distribution business is struggling a lot and has been for a while.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: The business is struggling to get people to go to the movies and also to watch the movies if they're on streaming and trailers feel like they're getting a little more desperate and a little more disconnected from the movies themselves in an attempt to grab whatever the studio executives think the audience wants.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: It sounds like you're saying trailers were not always so thirsty. There was a time where they were reasonable. Are trailers as old as movies? Were there trailers back in the day like silent films? So trailers kind of appeared right about when movies appeared or the movie industry, I guess. You know, you need a commercial to sell a product. And Hollywood has always treated films as a product first in an art form afterwards.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So you make commercials for them. But what's interesting is that they initially were kind of designed to make you come back and see the next installment of something or make you kind of intrigued about like what will happen. So they might show you some of the story, but then they'll say, you know, what will happen to our hero or something like this.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And that thread of intrigue, you can kind of follow it through the best trailers right into the 1940s. The Citizen Kane trailer is a really interesting one to watch because it kind of Orson Welles just talking about like who is Citizen Kane What the real truth about Charles Foster Kane I wish you come to this theater when Citizen Kane plays here and decide for yourself Asking all these intriguing questions.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And again, you're like, I don't know. I want to find out. And it's a little bit like what horror trailers do now where it's like, well, what is going on in this weird house with these weird people in it? I'm curious, right? You know, a really famous example is the trailer for Psycho. So in the trailer for Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock is walking through the Bates Motel. Good afternoon.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And he's sort of telling you all the stuff that happened in this place. Here we have a quiet little motel. And he's almost giving away what is about to happen in Psycho, but he sort of stops short of telling you what actually is happening here. It has now become known as the scene of the crime. That's like a really effective way to get people to buy a ticket because this is also at a time where the only way you were going to find out is if you bought a movie ticket and went and saw the movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: You couldn't read about it on Wikipedia. You weren't going to, you know, be able to rent it three months later and see it in your house. You didn't have a television like this was the way you were going to see the movie. And then there's sort of this move that's kind of funny into almost, you might say, avant-garde trailers in sort of the 60s and 70s when Hollywood was moving from its big epic era into these like smaller, more nimble films that appealed to younger people.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And you'll see trailers that have just images, just words, just sort of an experience like you're going to come see this movie and you're going to have this feeling. And then when we move into the blockbuster era, particularly with Jaws, you know, Jaws is like the biggest commercial product ever. And it was a huge, huge hit. And the way they got people in the door was with this trailer that basically tells you everything that's going to happen in the movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And it was a massive hit. And there's sort of a long era where trailers tell you everything about the movie. The original Star Wars movie trailer tells you everything about the movie. And you go because you like the idea of seeing that. No legendary adventure of the past could be as exciting as this romance of the future. Here they come. May the Force be with you in Star Wars.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So 2022 felt like the first year where people across the board mostly felt comfortable going back to a movie theater. How did that go? Times have been better. Times have been worse. So 2022 had better box office receipts than 2021 or 2020 for obvious reasons. But even the top grossing films weren't making as much as top grossing films might have in previous years.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: You know, a film like Top Gun, which spent most of the year at top of the list, that made a lot of money. But it's not maybe as much as it might have made if it came out in 2018 or a normal 2020 that didn't happen. Right. And we have movies like Avengers Endgame and movies like that that topped lists in the past. We're still making more money than a movie like Top Gun Maverick, which, you know, is a shame.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But that's kind of where we're at as a culture at this point. Can Avatar fix it? Is Avatar 2 like the Black Friday of cinema? It could be. You know, it's going to take a long time to know that information. The original Avatar movie was a sensation. Avatar held so well. You know, it opened last week with $77 million. This weekend, it had $75 million. It only dropped 3%.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: That means the word of mouth on Avatar is incredible. But part of the reason it made so much money is that it was a massive hit, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. You know, in China and in different territories. And they spent a truly extraordinary amount of money making Avatar Way of Water. And you have to make that money back in order for it to be considered a hit.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: So it's wild to think about, but that movie could make more money than any movie has ever made and still barely break even, right? So we're in a position where in some ways the movie studios have done this to themselves in that they're making more and more expensive movies in an attempt to, you know, wow people, get people from all over the world to watch their movie.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: But it's a real catch-22 because you can't fail. You know, you have to make that much money back. You know, it's funny, the moment that Hollywood finds itself at now is not totally unlike where movie studios were in the early 60s, where they were turning out these bloated musicals and biblical epics and, you know, kind of these ponderous dramas.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: And then what we had was these, you know, young, exciting, independent filmmakers coming in and making Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider and The Graduate. and these movies that are really exciting and nimble and kind of experimental because they have low budgets. And so maybe we'll find ourselves back in that moment.
--:-- Alyssa Wilkinson: I can only hope because that's how we infuse new life into the movies. We'll make a trailer for that world. In a world. In a world. In a world In a world In a world In a world where trailers are giving away everything In a world where there are trailers for trailers In a world where the trailer is for a movie that doesn't exist One movie can save us all Avishai Artsy, Laura Bullard, Matthew Collette, Efeem Shapiro, and Idris Elba Today Explained. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
