Trailers and Spoilers

The first major trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has just arrived and even by contemporary standards, it does give a great deal of the film’s plot away. It’s also not coy about showing off the latest dinosaurs that feature in the movie. Overall, as a trailer it certainly does its job and whet’s the audiences appetite. I am certainly interested in seeing this blockbuster next summer. But as ever with anything that happens online, there has been a degree of push back from those who feel that it shows too much and that it should have come with spoiler warnings. Some are arguing that this culture of “showing the best bits” is a recent phenomenon but a cursory review of classic movie trailers on You Tube, will show you that this has always happened.

So, is there a solution to this problem, if indeed it is actually a problem. Because not everyone sees potential spoilers as a negative thing. Movies are now pitched at international markets as they are dependent on the global box office returns to recoup their prodigious production costs. Japan has always been an important sales region and in recent years China has become increasingly important to sales. Both of these countries often have trailers tailored to their specific tastes and market research shows that these viewers like to know as much about what will happen in a movie as possible. Hence a trailer such as that for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will be warmly received. Plus, there is also evidence to show that western objections to “showing too much” is mainly age related. The old complain where the young (who are often the target audience) do not.

So it would seem that the die has been cast and this style and approach to marketing big budget movies is just a fact of life. As for the solution that I mentioned, the most prudent action would be to just avoid watching any trailers and to keep yourself informed about such movies by simply reading text articles or even just relying upon word of mouth. The internet has utterly changed the way films and produced and sold, with the whole process now being a public spectacle. Things will never return to the way they were, so it is best to adjust accordingly. As for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I have no doubt that it will clean up at the box office as did its predecessor. Dinosaurs remain a source of fascination for both children and adults and movies such as this simply feed that passion.