It has been a stellar year for bad ads – but when the worst kind of
trailer is the one nobody talks about, it’ll do no damage to the industryModern Toss on marketing movie trailers...When is the optimum time to arrive at the cinema? If you answered: “Exactly 10 minutes before the advertised start, so I can be seated in time to catch all the trailers,” then, congratulations. That was the correct answer 15 years ago. These days, if you make it to your seat before the BBFC’s rating card you are in risk of seeing something you might not like.
Sonic the Hedgehog, Cats, Last
Christmas, Doolittle: 2019 has been a banner year for bad trailers. None of the above titles have even reached the multiplexes yet, but their promos have already been comprehensively dissected and dissed online. First there was Paramount’s upcoming video game adaptation Sonic the Hedgehog, whose creepy CGI hero, complete with worryingly human teeth and legs, appalled and terrified Twitter. Sonic was followed by another stomach-churning rollercoaster ride into the depths of the uncanny valley in the form of the now-notorious Cats trailer, and its nightmarish half-human, half-moggie hybrid creatures. Doolittle added a condensed tour of the
UK to its CGI weirdness, care of Robert Downey Jr’s bizarrely roaming accent, while the trailer for Emilia “Daenerys” Clarke’s upcoming film, Last Christmas, was criticised for seeming to feature a dead giveaway of the film’s presumed third-act twist (“Dead” being the operative word).