Dead Men Tell No Tales hasn’t reached theaters yet, but it gives us a great opportunity to talk about The Trailer Problem: when a movie shows all its cards too soon. Do trailers get us excited at their own expense?
There will be mild spoilers below. While I haven’t watched the movie, I have painstakingly watched all the trailers, featurettes and interviews.
Related: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales movie review: The new adventure sails
Trailers are notoriously difficult to get right. Sometimes they’re terrible and make a great movie look unappealing — other times the opposite happens, and an excellent trailer leads audiences to an underwhelming film. And sometimes, they reveal way too much.
We watch trailers to try to gauge how good the movie will be. Paradoxically, we hope that it won’t tell us too much, because we want some mystery going in, which causes many mixed feelings when trailers come out; there comes a point when too much excitement becomes a cause for concern.
This fifth installment of Pirates makes for a great case study, as it quickly led us through all the stages of excitement and emerging concern… do we know too much now?
Firstly, the matter of Henry Turner.
There was a very exciting time in which we weren’t quite sure if ‘Henry’ was Will and Elizabeth’s son or not. None of the trailers mentioned it, nor was he credited anywhere as more than ‘Henry.’ The mystery of Henry’s identity might have been an excellent plot point — similar to the mystery of Rey’s parentage in Star Wars — and could have made for a thrilling surprise in theaters.
It could have been a great plot device, building up to an eventual reveal of Henry’s identity somewhere in the story; or maybe leading audiences in expecting a Turner, and delivering us someone else entirely… perhaps even Henry Sparrow, or Henry Jones (which would make for a fascinatingly dark plot).
Instead, Disney revealed the truth in a decidedly unglamorous fashion, in a featurette which credited Brenton Thwaites as ‘Henry Turner.’ No big reveal or anything. Naturally, we all noticed, and a while later we got the theatrical trailer that showed us even more about his character.
Then, the question of Keira Knightley’s return. She had stated that she wouldn’t be returning to Pirates, but we saw her in a trailer some months back, which makes it clear that she’ll be making some sort of appearance in the movie. But why put a clip of her in the trailer at all? Would Knightley’s appearance really bring in such a big audience to make spoiling the surprise worth it?
They had already nailed Orlando Bloom’s appearance with nothing but a short clip in one of the initial trailers, which was exciting, because we have no idea what has happened to him, or what kind of person he’s become… that is, until more of him started appearing in trailers. So far, there are still secrets, but it’s already more than we need to see.
And lastly, revealing the villain too early. Using Captain Salazar as the focal point for the trailers was a good way to keep the focus away from the main characters and simply tease us with glimpses of Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and the others. But with reviews stating that his character is rather flat, and that he doesn’t have much more to him besides his vendetta against Jack, we’re left wondering. Have we already seen everything there is to see about Salazar without even seeing the movie?
Looking back at earlier trailers for Pirates movies, Dead Man’s Chest did an excellent job setting up Davy Jones as its villain, without spoiling the depth of his character. The secrets of Davy Jones’ chest, his relationship with Calypso, and his involvement with the Turner family were all conveniently guarded in the trailers. That level of care given to gradually revealing his storyline may have contributed to making Davy Jones one of the most intriguing characters of the franchise.
Just how complex a character Salazar really is remains to be seen, but we can only hope that Disney was careful when choosing what to show us; hopefully Salazar will reveal some intriguing secrets yet.
Maybe it’s too much to expect from a Disney franchise, especially when it comes to an adventure movie, but it would be good to have some surprises once in a while. And according to Hypable’s review, the movie itself has some issues with revealing too much, too quickly. It’s a pity for a universe that’s as large as Pirates… they certainly have space to surprise us.
But Disney is also behind Star Wars, one of the largest and most powerful franchises of today, which has certainly stuck to absolute secrecy when it comes to making their movies. We went in to see Force Awakens with absolutely no idea of what was going to happen — we weren’t even entirely sure who was going to be the main character, or which one of them was going to be a Jedi. We didn’t even know who would be playing the villain. It made for an awe-inspiring experience.
It would be a great move if the Pirates trailers were playing with the audience’s expectations, setting us up to believe that we’re getting a specific sort of movie, and then surprising us — notable examples of this are the theatrical trailers for Mad Max: Fury Road and Arrival, both of which set us up to expect a certain kind of genre and its tropes, and went on to subvert it in wonderful ways on screen.
For those of us who have yet to watch Dead Men Tell No Tales, however, just how much the trailers revealed has yet to be seen. Hopefully, there are still some twists and turns to keep us on the edge of our seat.
Or maybe we should stop watching trailers entirely, and just wait until the release date of movies to have a fully immersive experience.