'Trailer-Dar' how accurate are you at judging a bad movie?

[KrangPrime]

So, the new millenial consensus is that you CAN'T judge a movie by info released before even a trailer or a production still has come out.

the ONLY way you can judge a movie is by either watching the trailer, or watching the movie itself. Then, and ONLY then does your opinion matter.


So, ignoring that for the moment......how often has your Radar, or in this case, 'Trail-dar' senses been right about a movie? Either based on your personal sensibilities, or with public reaction in general?

what's your track record on guessing if a movie is going to be good or bad based on pre trailer released info?


sometimes, a trailer is all you need. There was one Leslie Neilson movie that had a titanic parody in the trailer...and the movie was just as horrible.

So, how accurate are your trail-dar senses?

 

[Monkey67]

Question..judging a movie off a trailer being good / terrible vs being successful. Can you count your trailer -dar as being right even tho you know the movie will suck yet be successful since you know there are people with massive hard ones for the subject/ characters of the movie?

 

[cboath]

Personally, i've seen many a good trailer that turned into a crap movie. Can't say as i can recall a poor trailer that turned out to be a good movie. The only possible exception I can think of off the top of my head was John Carter, which wasn't a bad movie, but the trailers were just horribly done and targeted.

I'm sure some here will say they're damn near perfect. Me, not so much. Usually most come off as 'meh' in the trailer. To me a trailer should give you a sense of the movie and today that just doesn't seem to happen too much. Just here's a funny scene or two, come watch - or here's a tough guy, come watch, or here's some action, etc...

 

[Solo4114]

Personally, i've seen many a good trailer that turned into a crap movie. Can't say as i can recall a poor trailer that turned out to be a good movie. The only possible exception I can think of off the top of my head was John Carter, which wasn't a bad movie, but the trailers were just horribly done and targeted.

I'm sure some here will say they're damn near perfect. Me, not so much. Usually most come off as 'meh' in the trailer. To me a trailer should give you a sense of the movie and today that just doesn't seem to happen too much. Just here's a funny scene or two, come watch - or here's a tough guy, come watch, or here's some action, etc...

That's about where I come out on this.

I can usually spot a film that I don't think I'm going to enjoy, and, since I won't see that film, I'm "right" by default. That said, I've been spoofed by "meh" trailers before, too.

I watched Kingsman: The Secret Service recently on HBO, and although the trailer looked, eh, alright, I really enjoyed the film. That said, there are certain kinds of films that I know I'm going to dislike, based both on the trailer and on some pre-release knowledge of the film. E.g., almost anything with Michael Bay attached to it, and definitely anything with the name "Roland Emmerich" involved.

To be fair, though, I almost never go to the theater anymore to see a movie, so the overall impact of watching a disappointing film is considerably minimized when I'm watching it on cable or a streaming service.

 

[cayman shen]

I wasn't sure about Fury Road, which turned out to be brilliant, and I was totally certain Terminator Genisys would rock, and it was unwatchable dreck. My trailerdar is weak.

 

[Solo4114]

I wasn't sure about Fury Road, which turned out to be brilliant, and I was totally certain Terminator Genisys would rock, and it was unwatchable dreck. My trailerdar is weak.

Fury Road is another where the pre-release hype made me roll my eyes intensely, but the film itself was sheer brilliance.

 

[cayman shen]

Fury Road is another where the pre-release hype made me roll my eyes intensely, but the film itself was sheer brilliance.

Once the reviews rolled in I was sold, but when it was just the trailers, I was pretty lukewarm/guarded. My Genisys enthusiasm is unforgivable however

I joke but I think for the most part I can judge a flick pretty well by the trailer. Once in awhile I flub/get caught up in hype though. I was so, so excited for Transformers. Ended up walking out of the theater 3/4 of the way through.

 

[Treadwell]

Depends on how far back you go. The skill of trailer making ebbs and flows. Most 60s and 70s trailers are awful. Star Wars included.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce6BFgwazMg

 

[KrangPrime]

Question..judging a movie off a trailer being good / terrible vs being successful. Can you count your trailer -dar as being right even tho you know the movie will suck yet be successful since you know there are people with massive hard ones for the subject/ characters of the movie?

If you know the movie will suck, and are proven right, yet, it's STILL successful, because the casuals just don't care about quality? then yes, your trailer-dar is right ;o).

case in point, Bay Turtles ;o).

 

[PoopaPapaPalps]

I'm usually good at sniffing out crap by the trailer but it gets a bit more muddled when it's just an average trailer for what turns out to be a really good film.

I wasn't sure about Fury Road, which turned out to be brilliant, and I was totally certain Terminator Genisys would rock, and it was unwatchable dreck. My trailerdar is weak.

The Comic-con trailer for Fury Road had me by the balls when I first saw it (It still is a damn good trailer). The only thing that I was iffy about at first was the amount of CG in in it but, after seeing the movie, I realized I was just nitpicking. The second trailer though, I will concede, just makes it look average but it's that Comic-con one that really does it justice.

 

[Augh]

OP is extremely specific, so I do kinda feel like I'm providing ammo for someone else's argument.

But anyway, more and more recently I've found trailers actually starting to be a reliable meter. I know how wrong that is, and not talking first teasers here, I'm talking about the 2min+ theatrical trailers. Fury Road, TFA, Jurassic World, everything Marvel have panned out exactly, precisely as good or bad as the trailers suggested. Trailer as synonym for spoiler is an issue, but also a whole different discussion.

Actually getting to where I avoid trailers of anything I'm even vaguely interested in.

 

[batguy]

I think trailers are more reliable than not if you know how to read between the lines. But in the direct sense they don't represent the movies at all IMO.

Most trailers these days just put me off. They mostly range from assaulting to clumsy to emotion-jerking to just stupid. What I call a "good" trailer is usually one that makes me think "This trailer is an unpleasant and/or misleading 2 minutes but I think I'm gonna like the movie they were manipulating here."

 

[Wes R]

Modern trailers are so badly made they actually put me off the movies, not to mention the fact that most of them are made for people with no attention span so they put tons of spoilers into them. Older trailers from the 40s to the mid 90s were an artform unto themselves just like the posters were. Promotional materials for movies now are almost as throw away as the movies themselves.