Should movie trailers be reduced to 90 seconds?

For a really long time now I’ve thought movie trailers for upcoming films have been giving away too much of the plot by showing too many pivotal scenes. Am I alone in thinking this? Or are you sick of two and half minute trailers packed with spoilers?

The running times for several movie trailers (which I’m not going to name because it would defeat the purpose of this post) have been around the 2:30 mark. These trailers are almost as long as some music videos! The majority of movie trailers contain spoilers and if the trailers include the entire plot, then why the fuck would I pay to see action I’ve already seen for free?!

I think one of the reasons why movie trailers are so long nowadays is because there is so much competition and so many movies at the cinema to choose from, therefore studios try to include all the best scenes of movies in their trailers. Of course this then means not much is left to the imagination and those who may have initially intended to watch a particular movie, have now been discouraged from going to the cinema to watch it because there is little suspense left for them. The experience has been ruined now that the plot has been given away.

So how can we avoid this from happening? I honestly don’t think there is anything that can be done to stop movie trailers from including so many spoilers but if I had it my way I’d propose a restriction in running time of movie trailers in order to prevent the plot from being spoiled. A 90 second trailer would do the job just fine. That’s usually the standard length of ‘teaser’ trailers nowadays.

Tags: film, spoilers, trailers

This entry was posted on January 5, 2012 at 23:51 and is filed under Debate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.