A great movie trailer can single handedly turn a movie into a success story–like that genius Cloverfield trailer in 2007 that didn’t say what the title of the movie was. But it’s more common these days, I’d argue, for a trailer to have the opposite impact. A generic trailer can so thoroughly dampen hype for a film that something like Furiosa, a great movie everybody likes that’s a sequel to a great movie everybody likes, could become a major box office disappointment.
Furiosa was the second big financial letdown in May after The Fall Guy kicked the month off with a similarly low-key box office take, and both will end up coming in well below the numbers that summer blockbusters are supposed to have–neither of these films will get to the $100 million mark at the domestic box office. There are a lot of factors playing a part in why the summer has been so dismal thus far, but this my favorite: the trailers for those movies were awful.
In technical terms, the ads for The Fall Guy and Furiosa are fine. They’re slickly edited, and they played up the cool action that those films have and all that. But they lacked something that’s just as important as big explosions for potential audiences: information. The Fall Guy was marketed on being a movie that Ryan Gosling does action scenes in–but if you wanted to actually know what it was about, or what the title meant, you’d have to google it. Furiosa, likewise, was sold as little more than Fury Road again but with new actors, with the trailers doing little to demonstrate how immensely different it is in structure. Furiosa is an epic tale that takes place over 18 years–it’s the Godfather Part 2 of Mad Max, basically, but the ads hid everything that made it different from the last one.
The core issue, really, is how cookie cutter the Hollywood marketing machine has gotten–just about every big trailer is cut similarly to these ones I’m complaining about. But it’s fine when they actually give us information, or are able to come somewhat close to matching the vibe of the movie. That’s certainly a factor in how Denis Villeneuve’s Dune flicks have managed to become hits, with Part Two reigning as the top movie of 2024 so far–the trailers for both Dune movies generally reflect the vibe of the films they are selling, and they use narration to fill you in on the various conflicts in the story so you can get a sense of what’s going on without reading any books. In other words, those trailers come off subconsciously to viewers as sincere and trustworthy.
And by extension, the trailers for The Fall Guy and Furiosa, which seem to fear trying to sell those movies on their own actual merits, play instead as empty and meaningless and not really worth caring about. Hollywood’s been churning out trailers like this, which coast entirely on vibes at the expense of telling you what the movie is about, non-stop for about a decade–we may just be over it at this point.
Previously: Are trailers revealing too much again nowadays?
I don’t know if I can put my finger on a reason besides cost, but I just don’t want to see movies in theaters any more. When my kids do, I’ll take them, but I have no problem waiting 2 months for them to show up on streaming when I can buy them for $20, 1/5 or less than the cost of a movie date with my wife or taking all four of us and getting drinks, candy, and popcorn.
Cheaper tickets, a decent lounge and bar with bar food instead of theater food would help, but there just aren’t as many must-see movies any more. I feel like blockbusters used to be maybe 3 or 4 a year, but now everything is epic and so nothing is.
I want to see Furiosa 100%, but it’s nothing I can’t wait a couple of months to see. Which kinda makes me sad because I used to absolutely love going to the movies.
My point is I don’t think it’s the trailers. I think audiences are more fickle.
It definitely seems to be Covid partly to blame - people just found it cheaper and more convenient to watch at home. It’s the same with pubs - I was talking to the manger of my local and he said there was a contingent who just never came back.
Lockdowns help highlight a lot of “just because it’s what you do, not because it’s actually good” things for people.
Theatres are generally awful. They are really only good if you want to do an event as a group, and not one has a space big enough to host.
The food costs too much, people make gross mouth noises when eating the expensive food, the seats aren’t comfortable, things aren’t clean, people talk, people pull out their bright phones, the sound levels are all over the place, you sometimes have a bad viewing angle, you pay a lot of money but still shown 20 minutes of ads at the start, you need to worry about things like bed bugs, you need to plan a specific time to go, people bring their kids to non-kid movies, going to the bathroom is awkward, colour balancing is all over the place, drunk/high people react in distractingly bad ways, and probably many more reasons.
Lockdown hit entertainment venues across the board as people found it cheaper and more convenient to just stay at home. The manager of my local pub says a chunk of his clientele just never returned. The cost-of-living crisis has just made it worse as prices soar.
I have excellent options where I am - a community-run cinema a few minutes away and a multiplex 15 minutes away (that has reclining seats, good air cin, plenty of space, etc and I have a monthly pass which hammers the price down - I usually cover the cost in a week).
I didn’t want to sit there for half an hour or more watching ads, and I’m too paranoid that I won’t get a seat or miss the start of the movie if I arrive later.
When I do go to the theater on opening weekend, I prepurchase tickets with assigned seats. But I’m trying to think of the last movie I did that with and I can’t remember. Probably Avengers: Endgame. Was Star Wars: TRoS after that? I don’t like to mention that one because I hate that movie so much I refuse to acknowledge it exists, but I did in fact see it opening weekend.
I enjoy going to the theater still, but there are so few movies that will motivate me to do so. I saw Dune 2 the opening weekend, same with Honor Among Thieves. I took my wife to see Barbie opening weekend because she was excited about it, and we went to see Everything Everywhere too. But before those movies I can’t even remember a movie I was excited to see in the theater. Most movies are fine at home.