I suspect that I enjoy watching movie trailers even more than movies themselves. Movies are long. No matter how good a movie may be, it must contain a certain amount of people walking around, maybe answering the phone, driving a car, buying a snack, making small talk, drinking tea, playing board games, writing a letter (oops, I think I'm starting to list things I want to do right now). It's hard for an entire movie, from start to finish, to be completely memorable and for each second of its running time to be profound and magical.
A movie trailer, however, can be mesmerizing in its entirety. All of life's precious memorable moments, insights, epiphanies, declarations, times of despair as well as triumph - they are all easily accessible in the form of a tiny little trailer. Feeling down? Just watch a trailer for an inspiring movie. Even if the movie itself is horrendous and not to be watched, the preview will undoubtedly make you feel better. Feeling sad? Watch a trailer for a comedy. Preferably a good one, but since those are hard to find even a poor comedy's trailer should contain at least one bite of hilarity.
There's nothing like a trailer to make life feel especially exciting. If you watch a whole bunch of trailers one after the next, life will seem beyond extraordinary. So many things to experience! So much wisdom to encounter! So many awkward and surprising things to laugh about! So many goblins to defeat!
Whenever I'm bored, you know what I'll be doing. Maybe one day watching so many trailers will inspire me to write my own movie script. But I would prefer to create a trailer - a little taste of neat perfection.
I have a love-hate relationship with trailers. On the one hand, they're a big part of the movie theatre experience. It's always exciting to see the shiny-new trailer before the feature presentations. But a bunch of crappy trailers is really disappointing. Also, I find that most trailers either give too much away, or are entirely misleading. They make shitty movies look good, and good movies look stupid.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, the Moonrise Kingdom trailer is awesome. I hope that doesn't bode ill for the film itself...