Avoiding The Star Wars Trailer.... Fail.. Fail Fail

[Scott Greig]

First a little background.

When I was in university I had a friend who went out of his way to avoid seeing any movie trailers. His reasoning was that if a movie was worth seeing, one of his friends would tell him. He would leave the room if a movie trailer came on TV, and would always wait until the trailers were over in the theatre before getting a seat. The result... we went to see Terminator 2 and he shocked when "Wow... Arnie is the good guy!!!". Since that was revealed in the trailer and every TV ad, he was the only one in theatre that got that particular wow moment.

Jump to last Friday. I decided that I was going to actively avoid watching any Star Wars trailers, ads, rumors and online speculations. I mean, really, what is the purpose of the of said devices... to get you to see the film. In this case, there is no way I am not going to see the film. 0% chance. So the trailers will only spoil parts of the film, hence my decision not to watch the trailer.

How did that workout... Yep. Fail. By Tuesday afternoon, even actively avoiding anything Star Wars, I had still managed to see clips or stills from 80% of the scenes in the trailer! For example I went to MovieBob's big picture. "Dinosaur Exodus", that should be safe I said to myself. What's the very first thing I see... yep, guy with funny new light saber.

That was pretty much to the last straw. I have resigned myself to the fact that in today's all reaching internet influence, it would be impossible to avoid seeing spoilers without completely cutting myself off from the internet ... and TV... and my friends.

I watched the trailer that night.

Scott

 

[tippy2k2]

Yeah, for better or for worse, that is the world we live in now.

It sucks not having the ability to block spoilers from ruining my experience (works are crippled by spoilers for me). At this point, I immediately stop reading anything that I think might even possibly maybe slightly spoil something because people just don't have filters on what they say anymore. Because I have the audacity to not pay $70 a month for cable, I have to be very careful about what I look at online.

 

[Scott Greig]

There are two great films I saw cold without knowing anything about it first. One was "Army of Darkness" and the other was "Without a Clue", one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes movies. If you get a chance, watch it without reading any descriptions of it.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

I dunno, I've been actively avoiding any Witcher 3 trailers, as well as screenshots, for the same reason and have been pretty successful in that regard. I know next to nothing about the plot, or any scenes in specific, and I also don't know what the gameplay looks like.

Unless it's different with movies? Maybe, I'm not into movies, so it could be a cultural difference between the two media forms?

 

[CrazyBlaze]

I haven't been completely avoiding trailers for stuff but I have been avoiding more and more information about shows and games and movies. Dragon Age: Inquestion for example. I avoided it except for the odd article or video and so when I bought it and played I found I enjoyed far more than if I had spoiled my self on it.

 

[lacktheknack]

I haven't seen the trailer yet!

...I'm in Cambodia, cut off from my friends, TV and most of the internet (only in cafes). It works.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I'm trying to avoid the Star Wars trailer too, but I fear it'll be an impossible task. I turned onto another tab whilst watching Escape to the Movies' latest episode, so I just listened what Bob had to say about it. Inevitably it's going to get those GIF trailers that play on the ad banner whether you want it or not.

Things I've seen from the trailer: the claymore-esque lightsaber, black stormtrooper (fuck you fucking racist nerds bitching about it) and a funny looking floating robot.

 

[MetalShadowChaos]

I think people involved in moves and games should be better involved with the departments that put out trailers. With a bit of work with the people behind the actual project it isn't too hard to make a trailer without spoiling anything the people making the movie/game consider important to the plot.

The star Wars trailer I think you're good with. They don't look to have included anything that spoils things necessary to your enjoyment.

But going way back to Terminator 2, if they had cleverly edited the trailer just to show Arnie and Liquid Terminator thing(not a terminator man myself, names escape me) doing action things, but not showing what they were fighting, they could have hidden the fact that Arnie was the good guy until the movie came out, which would have been pretty damn great.

I hope people can start to do clever things with trailers more as time goes on. We've already seen some of it, Godzilla having certain scenes changed to avoid certain plot elements, and I seem to remember a movie which actually put in completely non-canon scenes that were never used in trailers. But there's so much more you could do, like doing something other than just stitching together some clips with some synced music and transitions. Some original animation or arts fartsy filters maybe.

 

[Littaly]

Yeah I haven't watched it either. And I'm not even that excited for the movie. I just, you know, don't really feel like it has anything it can say to me, except for spoiling stuff. I know what Star Wars is, I don't need to be sold on the concept. The same goes for The Avengers 2 and basically every other super hero movie or blockbuster out there. If I don't already know what it is the two years of rumors preceding the release have already clued me in enough. If I know who's directing, who's starring and the synopsis or any other noteworthy details (which is basically impossible not to find out), in 90% of the cases, that's all I need to know. All a trailer does for a blockbuster is preparing me to see stuff that I'd rather be unprepared for.

Considering how many good trailers there have been for bad movies, they're not even good for cluing me in on what the movie is going to be like, I'd rather just wait for the reviews to come out and hear if the buzz is any good. The only time trailers do anything for me is if they open up my eyes to a movie that would otherwise pass me by. But Star Wars is not one of those movies.

I've basically managed to avoid it so far. Only seen

Spoiler

the black stormtrooper

and the

Spoiler

we're-ou-of-ideas-lightsaber-handle

. I suspect I won't be able to avoid it forever though.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Mmm maybe someone should make an app to avoid the person being spoiled but in saying so I can imagine making that would be impossible (even then I can easily see it being misused as a censored thing for being online.)
Granted such an device will only work for the internet only and to avoid being spoiler but your mate, good luck with that!
(Don't watched the video as it does contain alot of spoilers)