Commenting on the critics with Simon Columb…
Peter Sciretta writes for /Film on April 4th reagrding the new trailer for the Colin Farrell-starring Total Recall:
“The trailer for Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake seems to have impressed more than disappointed — I guess that’s the positive side of having an audience with very low expectations. It’s also a trailer packed with edits of all kinds of fun sci-fi futuristic imagery. Wiseman took a moment to call MTV and add some extra insight on the first trailer, providing shot-for-shot audio commentary…”
The publicity for this film has started and, to be brief, it does look impressive. A combination of The Fifth Element, Inception and I, Robot, it seems – and all those films, crucially, made a ton of money. Not a bad investment I think. Its also an established property, capitalising on the known brand of Total Recall which originally starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990.
Unlike the original, the amount of new-content, social-media coverage and publicity released prior to the film will be immense. Like Prometheus, Total Recall released a ‘teaser’ for the trailer, followed by a commentary track. Now I remember a time whereby trailers were the only publicity a film got – and many films relied on very little footage, leaving the proof in the pudding: the film itself. This often led to longevity at the box-office as word of mouth spread about the quality of the film.
With social-media providing everyone with any and every bit of information prior to a film’s release, it becomes impossible to go into a film ‘blind’. That is to say to watch the film knowing nothing about the look, style, actors and story. It seems that we are now expected to go into a film knowing a huge amount of information – and I’m sure that if you watched a theatrical trailer enough times, you could pick up on a huge amount of story and plot-points that are within the film prior to the release date itself.
Christopher Nolan knows only too well how this is the case and clearly publicises his films differently; in the case of Inception, I can recall multiple magazines openly discussing how much (a) they anticipated the film and (b) how little they knew about it. For The Dark Knight Rises the only released footage has been the IMAX prologue (difficult to find on YouTube now…), a teaser (which provided very little other than footage from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) and a theatrical trailer (which provided much needed relief that the film is going to be as amazing as we all hope). That is everything so far. Ironically, The Dark Knight Rises is released a full month earlier than Total Recall. In fairness, they are both very different beasts in terms of publicity – but it does highlight the different methods available.
There is also such a thing as overkill, whereby you see so much footage time and time again, that you get a bit annoyed with the film itself. Personally, I can remember watching Casino Royale at the cinema and adverts for laptops and watches, which also advertised the film, appeared before the film itself. One specific car-crash which was incredible in the film was ruined before it even started due to the advert for the car featured. Even The Avengers has had a huge amount of footage and adverts dating right back to Captain America: The First Avenger, which featured a trailer after the credits. Currently, /Film have also provided day-after-day set interviews with the cast and crew of The Avengers – all the actors, producers and directors provide a huge amount of interview text with an additional “60 things we never knew about The Avengers” page. I swear, there is enough for a small book!
Do we really need teasers for the trailer? Or commentary tracks? Or daily pages of interviews? Considering how cinema is always after established properties and rebranding them, why not capitalise on the brand itself. Why not re-release the original Total Recall? Why not get Arnie to discuss the new film? The trailer itself is not an ‘event’ – it is what excites us about the film itself! The ‘celebration’ of a trailer, or endless publicity, basically means that we are celebrating adverts and the inevitable decline in quality of film-as-art, and the steady increase in films-made-as-commercial-product. There needs to be a balance between the two.
Originally published April 8, 2012. Updated November 29, 2022.
