'This is the tale of an ordinary man who had everything ... " the gravelly voiced man intones, as the Warner Brothers logo melts into a Victorian London street and tinkling suspense music starts up, " ... until a man of power stole his freedom, destroyed his family and banished him for life ... " Drums pound, bells clang ominously, skies darken, Johnny Depp flashes his cut-throat razors, Helena Bonham Carter flashes her cleavage, and blood spatters across the screen.
This is the trailer for Sweeney Todd, replaying ad infinitum at cinemas and on TV spots. It resembles a vintage Tim Burton movie, but nowhere does the trailer mention the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. In fact, it goes out of its way to conceal the fact that the movie is entirely sung, save for a few snippets of dialogue (and Alan Rickman's bits - which really can't be described as singing). Stung at paying to see a collection of tortuously constructed Stephen Sondheim tunes when they were expecting a gory Gothic thriller, a fair proportion of cinema audiences has been walking out of Sweeney Todd. A complaint has even been made to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Trailers are a language we assumed we all understood. We knew exactly how much to downgrade our expectations according to the number of explosions, the intensity of the pounding drums, and the presence of phrases such as "Academy Award Nominee" and "Adam Sandler". We have even become used to the fact that trailers promoting foreign-language films strenuously avoid all reference to the fact that they are not in English.
But the goalposts are shifting. Sweeney Todd's sleight of hand pales next to the trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which was recently exposed in the New York Times for featuring camera shots, scenes and lines of dialogue that weren't in the actual movie at all. "Apparently, the studios and all their lawyers feel it's not a legal problem," said National Treasure's director, John Turteltaub. "They cut together the trailers long before we have had time to cut the movie together." Turteltaub hastened to point out he was dead against the practice. "Great movies can get lost because of this," he said, although he declined to name any.
Perhaps it's better this way. If movies really were like their trailers, they'd be so exciting, audiences would routinely die of laughter, despair and fear. Instead, we should acknowledge the fact that trailers have become an art form in themselves. They aren't advertising, they're experimental short-film collages, assembled from existing movies by avant-garde marketing teams. Perhaps we could make an Oscar category for them.
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