It started
with a
single brilliant trailer and one of the most memorable taglines of all
time: In space no one can hear you scream. Thirty-three years and four movies
later, the Alien franchise is
returning to its roots with Ridley Scott finally coming back to the director’s
chair for Prometheus, which opened
last Friday after months of hype and publicity.
Again, it all started with a trailer (essentially a homage to the first one with a bit of Inception foghorn added in) and an intriguing tagline (“They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.”), but this time, that was only the tip of the advertising iceberg. Next came the posters and official stills, the set photos and TV spots, more trailers and even a stunningly elaborate fake corporate website. Don’t forget the viral videos like this one, and this one. And this one. Oh, and did I mention that this was the movie that introduced the world to that increasingly annoying “teaser for the trailer” phenomenon? From December of last year, all the way up until the film’s June 8 release, the Prometheus marketing team scattered clues and tidbits throughout the Internet and the public’s collective consciousness, like Damon Lindelof and co. slipping philosophical and literary Easter eggs into Lost. At one point, it seemed as though we were getting new details about the movie every day.
Again, it all started with a trailer (essentially a homage to the first one with a bit of Inception foghorn added in) and an intriguing tagline (“They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.”), but this time, that was only the tip of the advertising iceberg. Next came the posters and official stills, the set photos and TV spots, more trailers and even a stunningly elaborate fake corporate website. Don’t forget the viral videos like this one, and this one. And this one. Oh, and did I mention that this was the movie that introduced the world to that increasingly annoying “teaser for the trailer” phenomenon? From December of last year, all the way up until the film’s June 8 release, the Prometheus marketing team scattered clues and tidbits throughout the Internet and the public’s collective consciousness, like Damon Lindelof and co. slipping philosophical and literary Easter eggs into Lost. At one point, it seemed as though we were getting new details about the movie every day.
Of course, Prometheus is hardly the first movie to promote itself on such a massive, frenzied scale. According to its Wikipedia page, The Blair Witch Project has been commonly credited as the first widely released film primarily marketed on the Internet, posting fake police reports and interviews on its official website and sparking widespread, online discussions about its authenticity. Since then, numerous movies, such as Paranormal Activity and District 9, have turned to social networking sites and other avenues for viral advertising in order to attract an audience.
How can you not want to see a movie that uses ads like this?
Nowadays, however, viral marketing
isn’t just for small, micro-budgeted movies looking to become sleeper hits. In
fact, it’s become the norm for high-profile blockbusters to provide a constant
stream of updates for the media and hungry Internet commentators, as if studios
are afraid that their latest beloved (or not-so-beloved) franchise entry will
be somehow forgotten unless they shell out hundreds of millions of dollars on
Twitter campaigns, billboards and worldwide
scavenger hunts. Marvel Studios made five movies that, in a way, served as
advertisements for one mega-movie (totally
worth it, by the way).
This doesn’t just apply to your average summer tentpole, either. Prestige pics and potential awards contenders are lavished with slots at prestigious film festivals and extravagant (read: expensive) Oscar campaigns, because what are the Academy Awards, really, if not the biggest promotional platform a movie canbuy earn?
This doesn’t just apply to your average summer tentpole, either. Prestige pics and potential awards contenders are lavished with slots at prestigious film festivals and extravagant (read: expensive) Oscar campaigns, because what are the Academy Awards, really, if not the biggest promotional platform a movie can
Why don’t they just rename it the Weinstein?
If this all sounds needlessly cynical, I apologize. But let’s
face it, we are now living in what Indiewire.com has dubbed “perpetual
sneak preview culture”. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in
marketing, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that, as the entertainment
industry becomes more and more fragmented, studios and filmmakers are finding
it more difficult to attract potential audiences en masse, increasingly relying
on social media and news outlets to generate buzz and publicity. Similarly,
with so many different options vying for our attention, we as viewers have
become more adept at tuning out everything except those movies (or TV shows,
songs, whatever) that find a way to rise above the noise.
Here is where all those trailers and viral videos come in. Marketing is about not only selling a product, but also building up expectations for that product. Trailer releases have become events in and of themselves, sometimes receiving as much press coverage as the actual movie, and with the Internet allowing viewers to bypass the theater in order catch a glimpse of the latest previews, why not? A couple of minutes and some bandwidth is all that’s needed for us to determine whether or not a certain film will be worth any more of our time, money and attention. A good trailer, or even an eye-catching promotional still, can put a movie on the fast track to box office success, while a terrible one can doom a movie months before it even enters theaters.
Here is where all those trailers and viral videos come in. Marketing is about not only selling a product, but also building up expectations for that product. Trailer releases have become events in and of themselves, sometimes receiving as much press coverage as the actual movie, and with the Internet allowing viewers to bypass the theater in order catch a glimpse of the latest previews, why not? A couple of minutes and some bandwidth is all that’s needed for us to determine whether or not a certain film will be worth any more of our time, money and attention. A good trailer, or even an eye-catching promotional still, can put a movie on the fast track to box office success, while a terrible one can doom a movie months before it even enters theaters.
Sorry, Taylor Kitsch
As a result, the vast majority of a
movie’s audience will have already formed opinions about it well before they
see the final product. It seems as though people often care more about a movie
fulfilling those preexisting opinions than about judging that film based on its
own merits (or lack thereof). It’s become virtually impossible to see a movie
without the hype, whether good or bad, in some way affecting one’s viewing
experience. This is why “underrated” and particularly “overrated” have become
such ubiquitous descriptors; they’re comments less about the film itself and
more about what it was like compared to what we expected, or what other people
said it would be like. It’s why misleading trailers and marketing campaigns can
so easily hamper a movie’s chances at success (see: Adventureland) and why some people dislike it when footage that
appears in a trailer doesn’t actually wind up in the film. It’s also why a woman sued Drive for not being Fast and Furious.
The job, then, of those guys on Madison Avenue, or wherever movie advertisers work these days, is to guide people’s expectations. If it seems as though a lot of trailers info-dump and spell out the entire plot of a movie, then perhaps that’s because, the more you know, the more accurate your pre-formed expectations are likely to be. It’s hard to be disappointed if you know exactly what something’s going to be like right when you walk in the door. By extension, studios have found it much safer and easier to market sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, adaptations, etc., basically anything with a built-in fanbase, than movies started from scratch. While many original movies obviously have managed to become genuine, explosive hits, they’re usually sold not on their originality, but on the presence of a well-known name, like an actor (Adam Sandler!) or director (Christopher Nolan!), someone who could theoretically pull in a sizable audience.
In other words, as depressing and perhaps condescending as it sounds, people like the predictable. We want to be comforted by movies, not shocked or put on edge. We want our comedies funny, our action movies loud, our romances sexy, and our indies quirky and/or dark. If some critic raves about a movie as the best of the year or AMPAS awards it with one of those gold statuettes, it damn well better be fantastic.
Or else us bloggers will have our
revenge.
And this brings me back to Prometheus. First off, we can perhaps
say that, for the most part, the marketing team behind the film seems to have
done its job well. The collection of enigmatic stills, trailers, viral videos
and whatnot transformed the movie from a film fanboys tentatively buzzed about
largely for its rumored Alien
connection into one of the most highly-anticipated blockbusters in a year
stuffed up the wazoo with potential Event films. Of course, now that it’s
actually been released, the cat’s out of the bag. Bowing to a respectable $51.1
million in its opening weekend, it received largely positive, but not rave,
reviews from critics. The question now is if the film can maintain the hype
and mystique that surrounded it before it opened and whether its ultimately
polarizing nature will be a boon or a detriment. Only time will tell.
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