90% of the time you watch a new movie trailer on YouTube, you will see comments like, “Thank you for showing me the whole movie.” Even though people are joking, it is mostly true.
Movie trailers reveal too much of the story these days.
Sometimes, the filmmaker thinks the movie is not strong enough, so they show the best parts. Other times, they want to tell people exactly what to expect. In very rare cases, they do it just to confuse the audience.
Giving Away the Mystery
Take the Apple TV show Dark Matter for example. The trailer shows Jason thinking he got kidnapped by someone who looks just like him. If you connect the dots, you can figure out the whole plot. You realize a parallel-world Jason had a good life but wanted the other Jason’s wife, Daniela.
What if the trailer kept this a secret? The book takes a long time to reveal this. Did the makers do this on purpose to pull in a bigger crowd?
The 1% That Do It Right
On the other hand, look at the trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah. It uses Fred Hampton’s speech as the main audio. The way Daniel Kaluuya delivers the dialogue is amazing.
The editing is out of this world. It builds up the speech while cutting to different parts of the movie. It is a solid trailer full of emotion. It does not reveal much about the story, especially for someone like me who did not know the history. Yet, I still love to re-watch it again and again.
This makes me realize that you can create a great trailer without giving away the plot. Of course, you need a good editor. But in the film industry, editors do not always get full freedom. In the end, the production team plays it safe and reveals as much as they can. This happens with almost 99% of movie trailers, whether Hindi or English.
Finding the Right Balance
Consider the Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2 trailer. It uses the song “Running Up That Hill” in a fantastic way. The storytelling and the beat drops are top-notch. It shows just enough footage. Except for Dustin screaming “Eddie,” the trailer worked perfectly. It used what the audience already loved without revealing the main plot. People love to invent theories. (Even though this still does not fix the Duffer Brothers’ failure in Season 5).
This does not mean I hate all trailers that reveal the story. I have my favorites too. The trailer for Shah Rukh Khan’s Fan literally reveals the whole plot, but I still love it because his acting keeps you hooked. I also like the Laila Majnu trailer. It hides one main plot point but still works well, even with a few clichés at the start. Sometimes, even when movie trailers reveal too much, the performances are so strong that you still want to buy a ticket anyway.
Final Thoughts
In the end, I definitely prefer trailers that leave a mystery for me to discover. But I don’t get mad like the people I see in the YouTube comments who echo the thought of ‘movie trailers reveal too much’. I know we live in a world where editors are rarely allowed the creative freedom to do what the footage truly needs. And it’s also always in our own hands whether we watch a trailer or avoid it.
If you enjoyed this opinion piece, you should definitely check out my other ‘My Say’ post where I dive into the ultimate Subs vs Dubs debate!
