Know any trailers that spoil the film?

May 23, 2012 9:07 AM

Speculation abound that the new Dark Knight Rises trailer actually contains plot spoilers. Can anyone think of other movie trailers that actually give away the movie ending? Clearly this doesn't apply to movies that were books first.
posted by msali to Media & Arts (25 answers total)

Best answer: The trailer for Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away is maybe the most notorious example of this, giving away -- not even subtly -- a crucial third-act plot development.
posted by eugenen at 9:09 AM on May 23, 2012

Trailers used to be even worse about this. Here's the trailer for Soylent Green, which literally just summarizes the movie and completely telegraphs the "twist."
posted by gerryblog at 9:11 AM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

AVENGERS SPOILERS AHEAD

The shot in the trailer where the Hulk grabs Iron Man out of mid-air was definitely supposed to be a surprise. So, not exactly a spoiled ending, but definitely part of the ending spoiled.
posted by griphus at 9:15 AM on May 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Also, in a slightly-related example, the soundtrack for Phantom Menace came out two weeks before the film did, and had a track titled "The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon's Funeral."
posted by griphus at 9:16 AM on May 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

It doesn't give away the ending "twist", but "The Sixth Sense" would have been a better movie if you didn't know exactly what was going on in the first third before the "I see dead people" line that was ubiquitous in the trailers/commercials, but supposed to be a surprise.
posted by brainmouse at 9:20 AM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: 10 Trailers That Give Away The Entire Movie

Also, Marvel comics has a bad habit of spoiling their Big Events to the newspapers months before the comics actually come out.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:38 AM on May 23, 2012

Best answer: TVTropes has a page called Trailers Always Spoil.
posted by eruonna at 9:39 AM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

There was a film out last year called Love and Other Drugs, which, depending on which trailer you saw, was either a crazy quirky romcom about two people who Could Just Not Get Along, or all of that plus a mysterious disease offing the girlfriend at the end.
posted by mippy at 9:48 AM on May 23, 2012

I happened to watch the trailer for Letters to Juliet a while ago, and I suspected it looked like the entire film. I just read the wikipedia plot summary and yup, the whole lot was in the trailer.

Why do they do that? Do some people really not go see a film unless they're Absolutely Goddamned Sure It Has A Happy Ending?
posted by greenish at 9:52 AM on May 23, 2012

In answer to your question greenish - a timely article that suggests, for some, knowing what is going to happen increases the pleasure
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/what-do-spoilers-spoil/
posted by unlaced at 10:06 AM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why do they do that?

The explanation.
posted by martinrebas at 10:15 AM on May 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Quarantine has the very last shot of the film in the trailer thus spoiling itself and the film it's a remake of, Rec.

I remember a review of Leap Year saying that if you've seen the trailer you have literally seen the whole film, bar the last minute. Also the remake of The Last House On The Left

Whilst not quite the ending the trailers for Terminator Salvation and Arlington Road give away the big twists of their films.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2012

Best answer: Terry O'Reilly discussed this on Under the Influence. Unfortunately the podcast is gone but a transcript is available. It includes the story of the Cast Away trailer.
posted by samhyland at 10:30 AM on May 23, 2012

The Guardian, and its trailer. When it first came out, I had a friend who would not stop talking about it. Later, she excitedly told me about how much she enjoyed watching it, and I recited the plot (and ending!!) that I had gathered from the trailer. She said yes, that was pretty much it.
posted by Xere at 11:18 AM on May 23, 2012

Best answer: I think the trailer for Prometheus gives away 90 percent of the movie. They find a ship on another planet ... and then ...

SPOILERS, use rot13 to decipher.

Gurer'f yvsr nobneq. Gung yvsr gnxrf bire zrzoref bs gur perj. Gur fuvc vf npgvingrq. Vg'f urnqrq sbe Rnegu. "Jr unir gb fgbc vg be gurer'yy or abguvat yrsg gb tb onpx gb." Gur tbbq thlf enz gurve fuvc vagb gur nyvra fuvc, juvpu penfurf onpx gb gur cynarg.

I mean, seriously, it's all there. Now it's just a question of which character(s) live.

Uvag: Vg'f abg Vqevf Ryon.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:52 PM on May 23, 2012

Best answer: The movie wasn't any good, anyway, but the trailer for The Time-Traveller's Wife depicts something that was a major source of tension between the time traveller and his wife for a big chunk of the book. I don't want to say more but is involves this character.
posted by davextreme at 1:33 PM on May 23, 2012

I've seen all the trailers for Prometheus, and I still don't think it tells you more than the premise of the movie.
posted by mippy at 2:11 PM on May 23, 2012

The trailer for the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, IMO, has a pretty big spoiler as to the identity of the mole in British Intelligence. I hadn't seen the original miniseries or read the novel, but after I first saw the trailer (I was quite keen to see the film), I was like, "Oh. I guess [redacted]'s character is the mole" and I was right.

I think there's a flash of too much detail in the Prometheus trailers. Enough so that as excited as I am to see the movie (AND I AM! SO! EXCITED! EEEEEE!!!), I don't want to see any more trailers for it.
posted by Aquifer at 6:37 PM on May 23, 2012

The trailer for the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, IMO, has a pretty big spoiler as to the identity of the mole in British Intelligence. I hadn't seen the original miniseries or read the novel, but after I first saw the trailer (I was quite keen to see the film), I was like, "Oh. I guess [redacted]'s character is the mole" and I was right.

Slightly off-topic, I confess, but when I first read the book some years ago, I figured out the identity of the mole about 30 pages in by asking myself "Which of these characters most resembles Kim Philby?" So it's also a matter of "real life spoils the novel".
posted by McCoy Pauley at 8:20 PM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Mr. Lexica rants, "The trailer for John Carpenter's Vampires is carved from a vein of pure, elemental spoiler."
posted by Lexica at 8:29 PM on May 23, 2012

Best answer: Terminator 2. The fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing a good guy is supposed to be a huge reveal in the film.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 8:38 PM on May 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Japanese trailers for western movies tend to give away massive parts of the plot. In the previews for Up, essentially they spoiled the first (and best) ten minutes of the movie. Terminator:Salvation was pretty much the same, giving away the shot of Arnold coming out of the smoke.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:08 AM on May 24, 2012

Best answer: The Funny People trailer gives away a pretty huge plot development that occurs about 90 minutes in.
posted by Smallpox at 6:44 AM on May 24, 2012

It's worth noting that the Japanese attitude towards spoilers is quite different from the general Western attitude towards them. I remember reading a book (insert handwaving about fuzzy memory) that pointed out that American TV teasers tend to be "Tragedy strikes on tonight's episode… tune in to find out who!" while Japanese teasers were more like "Tune in tonight to see how tragically Akiko dies!"
posted by Lexica at 11:27 AM on May 24, 2012

The trailer for the godfather is a basically a slideshow of most of the movie.
posted by jefftang at 2:19 PM on May 30, 2012