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Last week, we spoke a bit about the current state of advertising in Hollywood - specifically, how
film distributors have figured out a way to tease the trailers for upcoming
films, of all things, only to fall prey to Internet hackers and piracy. What we
didn't talk about, though the topic certainly merits some discussion, is how
these trailers seem to be advertising for films you may have already seen on
the big screen. And I'm not just talking about sequels repeating the vices and
virtues of their respective originals, as is so often the case. I'm talking
about specific shots or sequences lifted from previous blockbusters. They just
might be too subtle for anyone to notice them.
There's Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron, of course,
which just opened to $191 million in the U.S. (and crossed the $631-million
mark at the box office worldwide). But while you can expect the sequel to the
Third Most Successful Film Of All Time to continue many of the MCU's
long-standing traditions - sequel baiting, mystical doodads, killing off major
characters only to bring them back in future installments - there's a moment,
approximately 1:30 into the third and final trailer for Age Of Ultron, that should be instantly familiar to fans of The Matrix Reloaded:
Could
someone please tell me when trailer-worship became an actual thing? By
"trailer," of course, I mean "a short promotional film composed
of clips showing highlights of a movie due for release in the near
future," as Dictionary.com defines it, and by "worship" I mean
"people completely losing their s#@% over two minutes of random footage
for a movie that probably hasn't even finished shooting yet." Most
unsettling is the fact that you no longer need to venture down to your local
theater to view these trailers in all their big-screen glory, as was the case
in my day. Now, you can download the latest trailers onto your computer, or
access them on YouTube or some attention-seeking celebrity's Facebook or
Twitter feed, to your heart's content.
As
if that weren't enough, we have now reached a point where studios have started
releasing trailers for their trailers - 30-60-second teasers for full-length
previews soon to debut on TV or the web. I first noticed this during the
build-up to Star Trek Into Darkness
(2013), when Paramount rolled out this minute-long teaser on December 6th,
2012:
