Misrepresentative Trailers vs. Overly Revealing Trailers

Many people can attest to going to see a film and sitting through five trailers and later thinking, 'yes so-and-so film looked good, but they pretty much showed everything in the trailer.' Many of the same people have also ahd the experience where a film didn't live up to its trailer, or worse, was misrepresented and contained elements completely unpredictable based on what one saw in the preview. The question is really an economic one that has to do with studios marketing a film in whichever way will fill the most seats. A recent film that was famously misrepresented was Marley and Me. (Spoiler alert) the comical 2 minute and 30 second trailer gave no sense of the fact that the cute dog is euthanized at the end of the film, which made for many upset parents and crying children who bought tickets expecting a pure comedy. On the other hand, the trailers for the upcoming film Shutter Island have been criticized as revealing too much. Despite the fact that the movie is directed by Martin Scorsese and has a number of stars, the studio has decided to release the movie as late as Feb. 19th 2o1o, when its original release date was October 2, 2009 and is now showing a long, 3 minute and 17 second trailer. This appears to be an example of the studio trying to show people as much as possible to get them hooked while almost giving away the whole film. These trailers are a way for a film to ultimately appeal to as many demographics as it can without alienating viewers. Big studios, especially in our current economic downturn, are nervous about anything that seems to veer outside of the traditional blockbuster story arcs and archetypes. Synechdoche New York, an off-kilter mind puzzle, on the stranger side even for an independent film, was marketed simply as a story about a man who builds a model city of New York. In the actual film, this even doesn't even occur until the end and has little to do with the actual content of the film's story. Sunshine Cleaning, an indie film that presented itself like a quirky comedy in the vein of Little Miss Sunshine, had comedic moments, but contained ultimately more heavy dramatic moments than even most indie comedies would have. Sometimes it its possible to read between the lines, though, and in this way an astute viewer can read into the text of a trailer that a movie about a crime scene cleanup service will probably not be light comedy. Other trailers may contain scenes not actually in the film. One has to wonder if they were cut out after test screenings or just put there to attract viewers. Whether the trailer is revealing or deceptive, what the situation ultimately boils down to is manipulation of the general populace in order to maximize profits on these often vapid blockbusters, or to get more people, weened on mainstream fare, into an indie film, while they don't know what they are getting themselves into.