Are trailers the new spoilers?

[CatInASuit]

With the rise of the multi billion dollar blockbuster, which are all action and no plot, there seems to be a need for it to be as hyped as possible in order to try and get everyone to see it.

The problem is that just be watching the trailers they put out, you can pretty much guess how the film is going to go down. Several of them seem to be just the best bits of the film without the rest being filler?

Does anyone else feel that seeing a trailer is liking watching a 2 minute review of a film, and in doing so, let me know everything I need to know about it. It's like filmmakers don't want me to go in a and be surprised or shocked by what happens, but just want me to go in and hand over some money for more of the same.

[Orual]

I don't know ... I think it depends on the movie. I have summer action movies on the brain, so that is what I'll be using as examples. The trailers I have seen for The Dark Knight Rises have been pretty obscure as far as plot goes - you can see Bane, and some explosions, and everyone is angsty, and that's about it. (Nolan's last movie, iInception certainly didn't give much away in the trailers either.)

The Avengers trailers give a bit more away, but that is not really a plot-driven affair. The whole point of that movie wil be character-interaction, action, and humorous dialog.

Do you have some examples of trailers that gave the whole thing away?

[The Original An Gadaí]

Some trailers are synopses of the films, the best trailers reveal little and tantalise a lot.

[Elendil's Heir]

Some trailers are synopses of the films, the best trailers reveal little and tantalise a lot.

Exactly. I remember the recent Star Trek reboot's trailer just showed the ship being built (with anachronistically primitive tools) and told nothing about the plot, and didn't even show the cast. It still got lots of people fired up.

[Zuul]

I remember way back when Terminator 2 came out and my aunt complained that the trailer had revealed too much. It would have been a far superior movie, she felt, had no one known that Arnie was the good terminator this time around. The movie definitely seemed to be building some suspense on that point, so the trailer did give something fairly vital away in that regard. And since there wasn't much of a plot beyond "one robot tries to kill a boy, one robot tries to save him", that did basically give it all away. So it's not an especially new phenomenon.

[AllWalker]

I saw T2 without seeing the trailer. Yeah, knowing Arnie is good is actually one hell of a spoiler.

I'm still confused as to who would have seen all those X-Men: First Class trailers. One for each character, are you kidding? What's left to see after that?