The Trailer Gave Away EVERYTHING!!!

A trailer you wish you hadn’t seen? You caught it one day and it gave away everything? What was it?

Prosecution Exhibit 1. Cast Away (2000).

Pretty much any of the films in Cannon’s Movie Tales line (some more than others). Yeah they’re fairytale adaptations, but it’s still annoying to get a trailer that’s an abridged version of the movie.

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Titanic. Trailer ruined it big time.

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Really? What particularly? Obviously it wasn’t the ship sinking. We all know that. Was it plot or just how it played?

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The trailer for City Slickers 2 ruined the big reveal of why Billy Crystal kept seeing Jack Palance even though his character died in the first movie. It’s not a good movie anyway, but the trailer gave it away and it was clearly supposed to be a major plot twist.

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Good one! I eyed this in the theater and even as a teen shook my head.

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What! The ship sinks!? Geez spoiler alert :weary:

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@BootBoy84 inspired me to track this down. This fastracks 3 hours and 15 minutes into 213 seconds. Outstanding trailer or perhaps too effective?

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Only after seeing Titanic (1997) in the flesh, you realize everything is there in the trailer. I actually applaud the Fox team of editors since it is Cameron’s Titanic in 2 1/2 minutes. It is what it advertised. Cast Away (2000) as an original story outed too much in the ad to the detriment of wanting to see it. Titanic is a journey we wish to experience because we already recite the punchline.

I saw the movie long after it was out of theaters and thus I didn’t see the trailer until much later…but I can imagine there was some annoyance that they showed the Enterprise blowing up in the Star Trek III trailer. At least when they did it again for Star Trek Beyond that scene was in the first half hour of the movie.

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I vaguely recall seeing this and noting the Enterprise exploding and that burning into my brain. They wanted your attention and they got it.

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I can’t tell because this is the internet, but are you being sarcastic?

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Maybe. As someone said about Titanic in the movie, it’s a big rear end. It’s hard not to make the joke. It’s right there. Seeing the trailer, I thought maybe he referred to how the trailer is the movie in miniature because it is. I felt that when watching it now.

I mentioned this phenomenon in reference to this movie a few days ago. Kind of random, but it seems like the trend in the 70s and early 80s was to show the entire plot in the trailer.

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Well - it’s not like most modern media are ‘twists’ with endings that are supposed to totally come from nowhere. The 6th Sense was the last movie I ever saw where it was designed around the concept of a significant plot twist. So honestly I don’t know if its really possible to ‘spoil’ a movie in the sense that you reveal something that significantly impacts the viewing experience.

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Drag Me To Hell

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Audiences flocked to the stories back then not as much the sensation. Would you speculate the thinking to be we show them a good story in 60 seconds and they go and see it?

Haha sorry, just being sarcastic.

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It’s matter of degree. Certainly exposing some of the picture is a necessary evil to induce folks to attend it. What I spoke to as with Cast Away (2000) is establishing a Robinson Crusoe idea then a minute and change later showing the final scenes of the film in its fullest context resolving what is bulit-up in the preceding trailer. There’s establishing fascination and there’s telling the film in miniature and this is a distinction some ads blur. Some worse than others.