Movie Trailers: To Watch Or Not To Watch

          As an aspiring filmmaker, I tend to notice certain aspects of movies and TV shows relating to the production of the show or movie that the general public may disregard. I happen to pay particular attention to movie trailers. As we all know, trailers parade beautiful women, cars, and action scenes in front of the audience to make the film that it advertises more desirable. While this effort is a noble one, some trailers tend to ruin some of the intensity and adventure of a movie. Much of the time, the most thrilling action scenes occur toward the climax of the film, and these scenes are often placed in trailers to attract attention. I see this as a bad thing because, in my opinion, it takes a lot of the "wow factor" out of the film.

          Let me give you an example. A few months ago, I was eagerly awaiting the film Prometheus to come out. I watched all of the trailers, making me even more excited. By watching all of the trailers (multiple times I must admit), however, I ruined some of the movie for myself. WARNING PROMETHEUS SPOILERS AHEAD. I knew that the film was going to have some correlation with the Alien franchise (no spoiler there). Also, the trailer shows that an alien ship would take off and end up crashing back into the planet nearly killing two characters. We witness an Engineer standing above Shaw's death,  and even see Fifield's death. As I watched Prometheus, I kept mentally checking off scenes that I had seen in the trailer, and waiting for others to come. Knowing certain scenes, like the Engineer standing above Shaw, ruined some of the climactic experience for me because, as the film progressed, I knew that this scene would be at the end.
           I recently saw a trailer for Paranormal Activity 4, which was quite scary. However, having seen the clip beforehand, I realized that when I watched the actual movie I wasn't as shocked or scared because I had already seen it. The same theory applies to other trailers. Mind-blowing action scenes are fun to watch in trailers, but would be more captivating to see for the first time on the big screen. It is for these reasons that I try to refrain from over watching movie trailers for films that I am very excited about.  Hopefully this method will help maintain some level of innocence and make the film even more exciting to watch in the theaters.