The Benefits of Bad Movies - Part 2

The Sandlot: another not-so-great movie that is nonetheless one of my favorites.  I'm sentimental that way.

A few weeks ago I opined on a viewer's ability to derive the general quality of a film based on the reviews (and meta-reviews) from a variety of websites. Today, I want to focus on the somewhat more ethereal world of evaluating a film based on its trailer. This is, other than general hype and perhaps some early reviews, the only real exposure you can have to a film before you see it. It's amazing to me that no one seems to write about this much! Think about it - how many times have you left a theater after seeing some new trailers and said, "That movie looks awesome!" or "That's gonna be a piece of shit!" I've said it many times. Both versions. And think about how trailers work: they're several million dollars of advertising under any circumstance, so what is the production company using them for? TO MAKE BACK THE MONEY THEY SPENT ON THE FILM. It's a vicious cycle. So the way I see it, you can evaluate the advertising of a movie in four ways, listed below.

But first, an unnecessarily detailed explanation of the single most prevalent failing of trailers. I apologize in advance for this. In many ways, I think trailers are inversely and paradoxically related to the narrative arc of a story, in that the most effective trailers reveal very little. Now, film narratives rely on two interconnected concepts: the fabula and the sjuzhet.  Those are scary-looking words for pretty simple concepts. A film's fabula simply means the film's events, in sequential order (A B C D...), whereas the sjuzhet refers to those same events in the order they are presented in the film (potentially A C D B...). For most stories, these two plot setups mean roughly the same thing, with some key exceptions (such as Pulp Fiction, Memento, and others). But by and large the fabula dominates perception of a film, and we can think about its narrative arc in the same way we do that of a novel. To throw more jargon at you, that means that we are looking at five main aspects of narrative: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. I have a theory about this. My theory states that the more overtly a trailer presents the first two parts of this narrative, the more desperately the producers and distributors want you to connect to the trailer. That desperation shows. And it sucks. No one wants to feel like they're being conned into seeing a movie. I wish I had more bad examples of this, but it's just easier to point to trailers that get it right. Take a look at the teaser trailers (the 30-second ones) for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Yes, these are comic book movies, but damn, do they make you want to see the film! And guess what - they tell you absolutely freaking nothing about the movies. They don't even tell you who the villain is!  And yet, the idea of a "trailer narrator" who has to introduce the whole premise of the film in a 30-second TV spot has become so ingrained in our collective psyches that I bet everyone reading this blog could imitate his voice.  This trailer narration is like expository dialogue - it's just bad storytelling!

So now, without further ado, the four types of film advertising, and what the trailers tell you about them (note: these are not hard and fast rules, but they do tend to be true):

FILM TYPE 1 - Big budget, big advertising.  I usually think of this in terms of "blockbusters" - if your movie costs $230 million to make, you're probably going to be willing drop another $20 million to earn your money back, plus some.  This category is a real mixed bag in terms of quality, however.  For every Lord of the Rings, you just might get Transformers, or worse, Ghost Rider.  People will still see crappy movies, sure.  And you know what?  I saw Transformers in theaters.  IMAX, actually.  I expected robots and explosions, and I got 'em.  Terrible film, but decent entertainment.  So why do distribution companies spend the money?  Because they know that schmucks like me will pay to see it.  These are, without a doubt, the safest films that get made.
By the way, there will be a forthcoming diatribe on the MPAA rating system, but as a teaser, take a look at the "blockbuster" films coming out this year, and then count how many of them are rated PG-13.  Just a guess: I bet it's roughly all of them.  Think that's an accident?

FILM TYPE 2 - Big budget, low advertising.  Not too many in this category.  If they're not worth marketing, they're not worth making, especially for a huge budget.  Why would a production company pull the plug on marketing costs?  Well, if a film is absolutely destroying its budget... it might be time to cut your losses.  If another seven-digit marketing expenditure still only puts a handful of asses in seats, why bother?
The only good scenario I can understand is a medium-budget movie that gets low pub and does well regardless, or at least relatively well.  I'm thinking here of films like The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and things of that nature.  This is probably the first category where you might see Oscar-bait, but it's kind of tough for me to swallow that too many production companies will under-pub their best films.  Those are more likely going to come from...

FILM TYPE 3 - Low budget, big advertising.  So many great films here, and a lot of them are award winners.  I guess even more if you say "low- to medium-budget."  The point is that if a film only costs $8 million, and the production and distribution companies overspend the production cost of the film on marketing... they probably have a great deal of faith in the commercial success of the film.  People will see these movies, not because they're filled with amazing special effects and big-name actors, but because they're flat-out good movies.  If you see trailers for a film that looks like it cost nothing to make and it's nonetheless getting huge pub, it's probably a cue that you should see it.

FILM TYPE 4 - Low budget, low advertising.  Here's where things get a little weird, because so many of these films are indie flicks and pet projects.  Steven Soderbergh is kind of the de facto master of this genre.  Twenty-five years ago he pioneered the modern indie film with sex, lies, and videotape and hasn't really let up since; his The Girlfriend Experience (2009) shows that the low-budget end of production still has some enthusiasts.  Along with Soderbergh, some directors have, for one reason or another, moved away from lower budgets, only to return some years later.  Kevin Smith made Clerks. on the money he made selling his comic book collection, and we all know how well that turned out.  After Jersey Girl (a high-budget flop), Smith returned to his roots, so to speak, with Clerks II, for which he had a bigger budget but still directed like an indie film.  Films in this category really run the gamut of "awesome" to "shitty," so there's no good way to generalize, but again, check out the MPAA ratings here: types 3 and 4 are where you see the R ratings.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I won't prattle on too much here (like I did yesterday).  Obviously, I can't predict what you like, and there is no scientific way to separate the good from the bad.  There will always be exceptions.  But I do believe that if you take to heart the advice and guidelines I put forth in the two parts of this entry, you will save yourself from paying $10 to see a movie in theaters that just doesn't deserve your time.  Sure, you could guess.  But how often can you afford to guess wrong?