Red Band Trailers

The best part of going to the movies are watching the trailers for some of the upcoming films that we want to throw down our money for in order to just escape from our mundane lives for a bit with a little action, romance, comedy or all of the above. But what happens when trailers are given the opportunity to be able to entice the viewer with some of the more "adult" scenes from the movie?

Red band trailers have seemed to be the staple for marketing in the past years in order to sell a movie, I remember first seeing this when "Superbad" came out years ago and recently a red band trailer emerged for "Get Him To The Greek". With these new trailers we are made privy to how much swearing, nudity and sexual perverseness there is to expect if we decide to check this movie on on the set due date.

For me I think this is the worst possible way to market a movie. Why? Well simple, I remember seeing the red ban trailer for "Superbad" and thinking "Wow if stuff that funny is in the movie, think of what else could be in it!" And I went to go and see the movie and to my surprise all of the scenes and scenarios that we presented in the red band trailer were alot of the memorable lines from the movie. Which to me is kinda cheating, I think that red band trailers use this gimmic to be able to show the best parts of the movie in about two and half minutes and then kinda coerce you into buying a ticket to the movie. When I saw "Superbad" I just thought, "I just pretty much all of the best stuff from that movie for free on my laptop at home, why in the hell did I pay twelve bucks to see it?"

A great example of a movie that didn't go this route and was majorly successful was "The Hangover" I don't think there was a single red band released for that movie mainly because alot of the comedy in the movie was appropriate to show in the a typical green band trailer damned if it wasn't funny! Another good example is "Role Models".

Hopefully marketers will get the idea to not spoil the movie for free for people who are already excited for a certain movie. I personally want to be surprised when I go to the movies and want the unexpectedness to be one of the reasons why I am going to the movie.