SPOILER ALERT!

I was going to publish a short piece I’d started writing about ‘spoilers’ today but then, as it turned out, I found I had far much more to say about the subject than I originally thought I did and, as I rattled on past the end of the fourth single-spaced page of my deathless prose, I realised that I was going to have to split those witterings into a two-part burble if I was even going to have the remotest chance of holding your attention with my thoughts on the matter.

Doing the surgery required to satisfyingly reshape that particular discussion into a more balanced double-barrelled argument, or possibly just an argument with a sequel, is going to take a little bit of time, so, instead I found myself thinking about ‘teasers’ and ‘trailers’ instead, which I suppose means that the whole thing is rapidly spinning out of control into a three-parter (or even a ‘trilogy’) of which this now forms a part even if only as a sort of prologue, (or, if you will ‘prequel’) and the whole sorry mess will probably now need judicious pruning if it is to even stand the remotest chance of not boring you to tears.

If that’s not enough for you, however, just wait for the ‘special edition extended cut’ six months from now, which will probably approach novel length and not tell you any more than the original, almost comparatively ‘pithy’ version will, but with it you might just get to see the rare deleted scene where my lips form just the tiniest hint of the slightest of smiles. Mind you, if that’s the kind of thing that would get your juices flowing, then god help you…

Teaser campaigns are now the acceptable face of subliminal advertising. You know the sort of thing. A five to ten second glimpse into a world that might still be in the process of being filmed, designed to get the anticipation building up even before the full-length trailers start to appear; A phrase like “Coming soon” written in a specific typeface designed to trigger an association and make you realise an old favourite is returning; or just a glimpse of something or someone familiar that you thought had been totally wiped out in part one. Sometimes these appear alongside a specific date or a more general mention of a season of the year which might still be months away but is now tagged in your mind as an ‘event’ to look forward to.

When the trailers begin to become available for viewing, sometimes the final special effects sequences haven’t been finished yet so you get all the ‘talky’ exposition bits which can be quite ruinous or equally quite compelling as you try to make sense of a whole jigsaw of revelations. Later on the full-blown trailer showing all the very best bits of the film will come along and either drive you up to a level of anticipation bordering on ‘fever pitch’ persuading you that you really want to see it “Now! Now! Now!” or else it might very well tell you the entire plot, ruin the whole thing for you and even end up being a slightly more satisfying experience than the actual film itself ends up being.

I can’t believe it when I see old trailers from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It’s truly astonishing how much of the plot they will actually tell you, sometimes you’ll see some of the final shoot out in a Bogart movie for example, victims and all, so they’re best avoided if you buy the DVD and haven’t watched the film yet. I suppose it was a different world back in the days when those films were being made and both marketing and editing techniques were more primitive too, and the ‘best’ way to approach such things was still being learnt. Equally, the film could still have been months away from release and, because going to the cinema was what people did before they had televisions, I suppose that you might very well have forgotten just one trailer you once saw amongst all the double features, cartoons and newsreels.

Nowadays, the trailer has now become a more sophisticated animal, although some of them still commit the cardinal error of ruining the entire movie that they’re supposed to be promoting. At best, a trailer is a short montage of very good moments that manage to tell you nothing except that this is something that you really feel you’d like to see.

My own thoughts upon ‘spoilers’ I will share with you on another couple of mornings, but in the meantime, here are a few highlights to whet your appetite…

“I definitely claim to have an opinion on something…” “A passing reference to pornography…” “It’s a deep-seated desire…” “A sense of satisfaction…” “Watching sport is so much more popular these days…” “My awkward, geekish nerdy old mind…” “Now that I’ve got myself all worked up…”
“SHHH!!! SPOILERS!” Coming soon!

Hold on. Do you see what I did there…?