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Wow, a logo preview!
Ok - what happened between when I was a kid and now with
movie previews? Either I'm getting more jaded or previews
have become so cookie cutter mtv-esque that the good and bad
all look the same. There basically are only a handful of different styles of trailors that 99.9% of the time don't peak my interest in the
slightest and just make me go thru the remote control motion of Fast Forwarding with my thumb. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work at the theater.
Preview type 1: The preview starts out with classical
music and slow fades and then it hits a point where the "intrigue"
hits and the music changes to more urgent and the cuts start
happening every 1/8 second. Then the title of the movie hits
the screen with a super Dolby digital subwoofer thud.
Preview type 2: The 4 minute preview. Basically Cliff
Notes for the entire movie. These usually are for pathetically
predicable movies such as Julia Roberts romance crapfests.
The whole movie is summarized from beginning to the end to
the point where you turn to your friend and go "What
the fuck? We just saw it!". Not that a Julia Roberts
romance shitpile is hard to predict anyway; feed me the first
8 minutes of the screenplay and I could finish it with 90%
accuracy. Apparently some losers want to see the other parts
fleshed out - the witty banter, the triumphant performances
and perhaps a wildly unpredictable complete downer ending?
Preview type 3: The teaser trailer. I recently watched
a trailer for Terminator 3 on the Internet. It was basically
a Warner Bros logo morphing into liquid metal shit then into the T3 logo. Wow - how about I
take a dump, film it and call it Enchanted April? If there's
not even 1 second of ACTUAL FILM footage in the preview
it's NOTHING and not worth my time. It seems like there's a subculture
of dorks out there with their hands on their cocks that spurt
when they see a screen with a white arial font that only says
"COMING SUMMER 2004".
Preview type 4: A preview where all the funny parts
(assumedly since these are what's supposed to get you to come to it)
aren't funny. Take for instance the Dana Carvey movie
The Master of Disguise. If these are the FUNNIEST
parts of the movie then I think I'll just save $8 and push a grandma down the stairs.
Preview type 5: Scenes in the preview that AREN'T
in the movie or CHANGED such as in The Saint preview where
Val Kilmer says to Elisabeth Shue: "If you want to stay
alive, you have to leave my side" but in
the movie he says "If you want to stay alive, you have
to stay by my side". Also Spiderman with
the World Trade Center preview. In the poster, the twin towers
were reflected in Spiderman's shades. Dry your fucking tears
America, we all know Spiderman just wanted to catch the bad
guys with his web between the towers. If you look closely
you might be able to see George W. Bush.
The above preview types are actually refreshing when
you sit down at a theater and are inundated with 3 commercials
in a row. Excuse me, I thought the excessively high movie
ticket price actually bought me the right to NOT watch any
commercials. If I had to pay $8 to watch the Simpsons and
I saw Carrot Top at any point during those 30 minutes - heads
would roll. It appears that in-movie product placement, toy
tie-ins, Taco Bell soft drink cups, soundtracks, and future
dvd sales aren't quite enough to pump that $80 million dollar
movie to $293 million dollar status. Apparently it takes
5 commercials to get that star-driven mega-blockbuster over
the hump to profitability.
It seems that they've taken movie commercials a step further
now to promoting upcoming TV shows. A friend of mine saw a
preview for the John Ritter TV Show "8 SIMPLE RULES FOR
DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER" before a movie recently.
How ironic considering TV is free and funded entirely by commercials
the flipside are movies which are funded by ticket sales.
Makes you wonder how much movies would make if you stripped
out marketing, promotional tie-ins and a billion other money
making ventures that have absolutely nothing to do with the
films script or quality. The two new Star Wars movies for
example.
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