Friday, September 18, 2009

Marketing Problems

So it has been a recent occurrence that movie trailers are portraying films to embellish the action scenes and stories. The only problem with this is once you sit down into the movie and watch it, you are then disappointed in the fact that this movie you went to go see isn't at all what you were expecting. Granted, sometimes this can be great but when you go see a movie entitled "Gamer" one would expect more than fifteen minutes of the game itself. Or better yet, a movie called "Inglorious Basterds" where the the Basterds only appear in four scenes in the movie.

Now I have no issues with either of these movies, in fact, I enjoyed both of those thoroughly and plan on purchasing them to add to my collection of films. All I am trying to say is that when you watch a trailer for a movie that looks like it's going to be more action than story, your going to be really surprised and almost put off when you find out it's exactly the opposite of that.

Let's start with the big blockbusters of this summer. First, was District 9, Peter Jackson's film that no one really knew about because there were very few trailers out. Most of this movie was viral marketing but when all the marketing is clearly viral, your going to miss out on a great deal of the public. Friends of mine were completely put off to this movie because of the fact that the trailers were very few and didn't show much of anything. Though, if more of the film was shown, the amazing story in this film would have been ruined.

Next, we have Inglorious Basterds, the Tarantino film based around World War 2. The only problem with this movie was that the Basterds themselves were on screen for little more than thirty minutes. The story line itself was amazing and though it was a story about the other characters, the movie called "Inglorious Basterds" might not have been the most appropriate name for this film.

Thirdly, we have Gamer, the movie with Gerald Butler and Micheal C. Hall, about real people control the criminals who are fighting in a constant slayer game. Though our "hero" must win 30 games in order to win their freedom, we only see five minutes of games 27-30. Granted that's all you really needed to see, but I would personally have liked to see a few more games and how ridiculous and intense these games can be.

Lastly, the most recent movie I have seen "9", the Tim Burton movie (he produced it). By watching the trailers, one would come to believe that this movie is a complete action movie with very little on the story itself. Though, to my great surprise, this movie is completely story driven with very little action sequences.

Even with my complaints about the marketing techniques, I must say that each and every one of these movies I thoroughly enjoyed. The only thing I wanted to comment about these movies was that with such great stock footage to work with, it's a little absurd that the marketing companies used these scenes to spread the movie on false pretenses. All I'm asking for is a little more truth behind the trailers rather than sloshing a random bunch of scenes together.

No comments: