A Discussion Of The Art Of The Trailer (II)

So why do I watch trailers? And why do I love the trailers of some films, but not the films themselves?

I think a lot of it has to do with what one of my professors says about trailers: once you see the trailer you don’t even need to see the film. That’s somewhat of an exaggeration, but he makes a fair point. Most of the time, trailers tell you all you need to know. If there’s a plot twist, the trailer either directly hints at it or plain gives it away. If it’s a comedy, the trailer provides all the biggest laughs. If it’s a romantic comedy…well…we already know how those plots work anyway.

The point is that trailers, in some small way, prove to us that films aren’t about the plots. Films are about the experiences. What marketing firms have figured out about mainstream audiences is that they want to know what they’re going to get. They don’t want surprises. That’s part of the reason that trailers tell you everything you need to know about a film.

Could I—in any way—claim that to be wrong?

~

This argument dives directly into a fun area of literary theory that follows out of Russian Formalist theories derived from the work of Vladimir Propp. Although not a literary theorist himself, Propp has become famous in literary circles thanks to his in-depth analysis of the elements in Russian fairy tales, breaking down the stories into recognizable “morphemes.” These morphemes, according to Propp’s arguments, could theoretically be used as building blocks in the construction of fairy tales. Naturally, people who could not have cared less for Russian fairy tales took Propp’s work and applied it across the broad spectrum of literary fiction.

Whether or not one agrees with the Proppian notions of narrative construction (I, for one, am fascinated by his ideas, but not wedded to them), they present a clear method of discussing popular fiction and film—particularly when looking at common plotlines, such as romantic comedy, in which I indulged in the last post in that brief comparison of Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached. Two different films, for sure, but the trailers seem to disagree. They seem the same, because that sameness is what the marketing world thinks we want.

And maybe they’re right?

~

As a study case, however, I seem to represent a tacit failure on the part of these marketing ventures. By watching the trailer of Our Idiot Brother over and over again (I’ll probably see it one more time before the night is over), I won’t need to see the film. I’ll know pretty much how everything turns out in the end. I can picture the good-natured stoner played by Paul Rudd pressing his heartwarming life-view on his three sisters and I can imagine the three of them—each faulted in their own way—changing thanks to his tireless good humor. So it turns out that I don't need to see the film at all! The film trailer did that for me!

In that way, trailers become mini-films for me. For some people, they save, I think, quite a bit of time in the long run. Unless, that is, you watch one of them upwards of 40 times...in that case, you might as well just watch the damn thing.