At CinemaCon 2015, which took place April 20 to April 23, a lot of newsworthy items were announced. Spider-Man is going to be in his own animated movie on top of the live action one already announced. “Avatar” is going to become a moving exhibit. A lot of the major studios presented trailers and first looks at upcoming movies. But I think the most fascinating thing that happened at CinemaCon is actually relatively small. During their presentation, Disney showed a picture of their slate of movies projected to come out until the summer of 2017. This is not news in itself, but after I saw this, it got me worried.
You see, I like to be surprised with films. I don’t want to know almost everything about a movie before I go in. And that’s what happens when films are announced this early. There are 24 films on the image. Some of them are coming out in May, including “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Tomorrowland.” I am excited for both of those.
But there are some films way further off into the future that were shown in the image that I know too much about already, at least a year in advance. “Captain America: Civil War” is one that I have already read a lot about. So many people have been interviewed about it already that is almost comical to think we still have a year to wait until its May 6, 2016 release date. But the fact that I have all this information about it now, a year in advance, makes me wonder how they are going to market it for the rest of the time before it is released.
It’s better to wait until you have something to show the audience to announce a release date. Not something major, just like character designs or very small blurbs of the story, so that the audience can get excited at its own pace. That way, the trailer would give away just enough information to entice the audience, but also keep them guessing as to what happens next. Then, the audience would be able to go to the movie theater excited and not knowing everything.
Last week, I wrote about the “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” trailer. I still think it is a good trailer. It’s just that it was released far too much in advance for an initial trailer, and it contains way too much of the story this early on in the game. Though the film does not come out until March 25, 2016, I could make an educated guess as to what is going to happen in the story just from the trailer. There could realistically be a major twist that nobody sees coming, or small little blips that change enough of the story and make my guess not hold true, but very few films have those features. This is theoretically just a bump in the road for “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” because people are still going to see it regardless of whether they know the story, but this would be a much bigger problem for a film that is not a major superhero entity.
While Disney is the one who started all of this, I have to give them credit. They have one film series that is probably the most under wraps and anticipated in the upcoming next two years. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” just released its second trailer, as I wrote about last week, and I still have no clue about the plot of the film. I would give credit for this to J.J. Abrams, the director, but Disney is still allowing him to do this, which is remarkable.
Abrams has been keeping the story and characters of the film secret, for the most part. Apart from the trailer, there has only been a set of action figures and small statements here and there to tell us what is going to happen in this film. This is how I hope a lot more films will begin to advertise themselves. I believe films should be advertised, not with a bang right from the start and then repeating the same content for the next year or two, but rather with a subtlety that keeps the audience both guessing and anticipating the films.
