So this 3 Minute Justin Timberlake film is pretty amazing
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You could start a whole thread about trailers that tell us WAY too much about the movie. Where you may as well have seen the whole movie in the trailer given what they tell you (too much).
For instance, this was the first time it really bugged me. This movie was, in relative terms, a huge hit. Dunno why as the trailer left nothing requiring you see the actual movie.
Yep, it's pretty silly. I can't remember the first time I noticed it, but yeah it's a rather insane trend. It seems to be more prevalent in dramas and suspense thrillers
I recall it is done very much on purpose. Some people want to know more than they should or they won't see the movie. I don't understand it. But you can do a search for discussions of the phenom. Example: https://filmschoolrejects.com/6-reasons-why-trailers-have-to-spoil-movies-fd66bb943078/
These days I increasingly avoid watching a trailer (or posting one for a new show I want to share with people) for these reasons.
I recall Batman Vs. Superman... and I think it was angry Joe that stated he could now tell you every major plot point that would be in the movie without having seen it. That there would be no surprises left. And I think he was right.
So... just shunning them. Wait for some good word of mouth without spoilers telling you to see it.
Its a rare sentence for me to say, but to be fair to Batman v. Superman, it was cribbing half its notes from The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and half from The Death of Superman (1992-1993). Anyone remotely plugged into DC Comics well have heard of those and recognise the beats no matter how de-saturated the colour.
That's the thing though, the movie going public, that go and see comic book movies, are not 1:1 to comic book lovers. Not by a long shot. So assuming "oh it's fine if we spoil every plot point, because they've all read this already" is incredibly flawed, because it's just not true. And I know this because I would consider myself a hybrid example. I used to work in a comic shop, but I stopped collecting them after....well after working in a comic shop in the 90s. It became a medium that I found absolutely dull and a money grab. But I am more familiar with the source materials compared to your average non-comic book person, and I still don't know DKR because I never read it.
So just beat for beat, laying out every major plot point in your film in the trailer, is never a good idea. Because even if they do know th ematerial, the idea of you remaking it is to show a new spin on things. But why do I need to buy your ticket, if you already showed me every significant plot point from start to finish?
I'd avoid doing the beat for beat trailers. I'd typically avoid making a movie that is too close to the source material too. It can work. I love The Watchmen. V for Vendetta was pretty good. But the 1st Spiderman? 20 year old spoiler
I pretty much sat back and waited for the Goblin to impale himself. Ho hum.
I don't want to see the Phoenix saga beat for beat, but dang it, can they take the basic idea and give us something satisfying?
Well I don't mind if the POINT of the work you are making, is to do a frame by frame recreation, like 300 or Watchmen, where you think 'ok the visual style of the graphic novel is slick as fuck, and I think these shots would be amazing in live action." That's fine. That's a stylistic choice, and I have zero issue with that. My issue is summarizing the entire film in the trailer. Show a few scenes to convey the mood/spirit of the film, and leave it at that.
And regarding things like goblin impaling himself. Again, taking scenes from the source material, I don't have issue with. Because again, MOST people who saw that spiderman film, did not read the associated comics. But showing gobba being impaled in the trailer (which they didn't do), would be really dumb. Because now EVERYONE knows what's going to happen.
I noticed I started doing something odd about 5 years ago.
I don't even know precisely when or which book, but I was about a quarter way through and then I flicked to reading the conclusion just to see if ended like I suspected it would. And now I do it all the time. I can't be bothered waiting to see how a (streamed) TV series ends, I just read the plot summary on the web. I still watch the episodes, I still enjoy them, even though I know what's going to happen.
I remember from classics that the ancient Greeks put on plays that endlessly retold the same Greek myths. The playwrights all did them in different ways, with different views, ideas, characterisations: the audience would knew what the basic story would be and how would end before it started, the only interesting thing was the way the story was told. And they (we) can get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I'm trying to train myself to go back to not reading the ending until I get to it. But I'm not sure I'll prefer reading novels if I do.
Yeah that's basically just how tropes work. Time tested storytelling tools (both good and bad), and how they are basically narrative shorthand. I see the whole "I know how this story ends" thing as being no different, on some levels at least, to re-watching a film/tv show you've already seen, but still enjoy the presentation of. To use your Greek example, they were basically watching the syndicated reruns of their favorite drama/sitcom. And that's fine. Though I do think some things can be lost if you spoil yourself on the first viewing. And sometimes, those unexpected twists, are part of why some shows are so beloved. Not all the time of course, but it's certainly a reason some become so popular, and stick so firmly in the collective psyche.
I think more strictly it was like they were watching "reboots": e.g. McGuire v. Garfield v. Holland Spiderman, or Reeve v. Routh v. Cavill Superman.
I guess yeah, I just meant it's not really any different than aspects of repeat viewing of similar stories we do today. The difference in your comparison though, is that all of those told actually different stories, but different actors playing the same story "Hercules vs the Nemean Lion" for example, are getting essentially a rerun. There is little variation if they are actually hitting the plot beats.
But I know what you mean.
In the original story of Medea, Medea doesn't kill her own kids, they are murdered by, I think, Jason's followers. That's a pretty big change by Euripides there.
Sort of. With the exception of perhaps the Iliad (which was regarded as particularly special) there seems not to have been canonical versions of ancient Greek myths. Thus there are certain agreed core points, but outside them there was significant flexibility even in the plots of Greek myth, as Thaluikhain points out.
So Spiderman is a hero, who is an orphan raised by his aunt, gets bitten by a spider to gain powers, and defeats the Green Goblin: but if they are the only fixed positions, the room to tell very different stories is actually huge. It's not like restaging Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the actors all have to recite the same lines as the previous version did.