Dear Entertainment Industry,
I woke up this morning to a tide of 'leaked' videos and pictures from the set of the Suicide Squad movie. Now I have no particular interest in this film but I get more passionate about leaked content and excessive advertising of products. The public is inundated with constant tidbits to keep them interested across periods of time which often amount to over a year and it has become very tiring.
Of course not all of these are intentional and it is sad to think that paparazzi will be lingering around films sets and locations in order to sell some photographs or footage.
The Suicide Squad movie seems like the perfect example of this, as constant bits of information and footage from filming is being shown. If someone was to actively follow this then chances are they'd see half of the movie before it was even released. I don't know what has happened in recent years but it feels as though someone has read an 'Advertising For Dummies' book and is throwing everything at the public to ensure interest is maintained in a project.
For me this is insulting not only to our intelligence but also a massive spoiler for the films and projects that we are interested in. It's as if you think we don't have a long-term memory and therefore repeat everything back at us at regular intervals to ensure we haven't missed anything. The number of American TV shows that recap whats happened in the show before the commercial break...this ends up taking up a third of the show's time!
The public is now used to seeing up to 4 different film trailers before the film is actually released and if you are actually interested in the film then this becomes a big spoiler. In fact so many trailers are two and a half minutes long and actually give away the entire plot of the film! You could easily just watch the trailer and have a confident conversation about the film without even watching it.
Another odd response to saturating people with content is that sometimes film studios create additional footage to put in trailers and then when these cool bits aren't in the film then you feel particularly confused?!
As a result of all this I think I am going to adopt one of my friend's policies and this is to ignore any kind of advertising for something I am interested in. Unfortunately this means I am going to have to avoid a large area of the internet that I like to spend time searching. But at least it will mean I go into the cinema without expectations or knowing big plot spoilers. Lets just hope that enough people feel the same and grow tired of being treated like memory-less fools so that you'll add a bit of mystery back to the movie industry.
