Previews and Trailers lessen the experience.

[Raziaar]

I've been thinking to myself... that previews and trailers of movies and stuff on TV lessen the overall experience of a movie. I mean, can you imigine your greatest movie of all time(in your mind), being one that you didn't see any trailers for, no previews or anything? Instead, you went to a movie theatre and watched it, without any expectations. No hype, no revealing of key scenes shown through trailers... no potential storyline ruined at all. Everything that comes at you, comes at you out of the blue.

It would be hard to make movies profit that way as fewer people would go without knowing exactly everything they're going to see, but damn would it be awesome! If people were willing to take more of a risk in this fashion, watching truely great, memorable films.

 

[brink's]

I think they need to find a more effective way of advertising, one that shows what potential the movie has but at the same time not reveal any key scenes or too much of it's plot.

Crash did this really well, the story totally caught me by suprise because of how little the trailers revealed.

But really, most movies now a days are so depended on the first weekend, because of constant competition and the general populations short attention span, that its really all about how many people they can pack into theater during a films opening weekend. So, as a result, story/editing/directing/etc take a back seat to cutting four minutes of interesting footage and getting it to as many people as possible before opening day.

 

[KagePrototype]

First time I saw Shawshank Redemption, I had next to no idea what it was about besides it being set in prison and starring morgan freeman. I wonder whether I'd still consider it my favourite movie if I knew more. Another good example is The Matrix, which caught me completely off-guard (the most I had seen of the movie before watching it was a teaser poster, which wasn't very informative).