Is hype mar­ket­ing destroy­ing the movie going experience?

When was the last time you went into a movie blind? These days it’s hard to avoid the hype that seems to sur­round every major new release. Take a film like Bat­man V Super­man: Dawn of Jus­tice. How many cast­ing rumours, plot details, set pho­tos, teasers, posters and pro­mo­tion­al stills have been seed­ed in the media since the film was first announced back in June 2013? Now con­sid­er how much you’re like­ly to read once the film is out. Beyond reviews and the odd think piece, the amount of arti­cles that will be pub­lished post release will be neg­li­gi­ble by com­par­i­son. It’s even less of a fair fight than the one in the title.

This is noth­ing new. Block­busters have been pro­mot­ed this way for a long time now and, as with so many things in the film indus­try, the rea$on$ hard­ly need explain­ing. These films rep­re­sent cin­e­ma at its most expen­sive and lucra­tive, and as such they must be exhaus­tive­ly mar­ket­ed in order to draw the huge crowds required to turn a prof­it. And that’s per­fect­ly okay. As Walt Dis­ney famous­ly once said: ​“We don’t make movies to make mon­ey, we make mon­ey to make more movies.” But what hap­pens when the mar­ket­ing proves more excit­ing than the actu­al product?

In the case of Bat­man V Super­man, we’ve been drip-fed a steady stream of infor­ma­tion via regur­gi­tat­ed press releas­es and pro­mot­ed social media over the past few years. With the film final­ly due out this week, fan engage­ment has reached sat­u­ra­tion point. The result is a nar­ra­tive that is almost cer­tain to be more mem­o­rable than the film itself, if only because the pro­mo­tion­al pre­am­ble has been pur­pose­ly designed to become lodged deep in your psyche.

Analyse the mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of every oth­er recent block­buster and it’s the same sto­ry. The first pro­mo­tion­al images and trail­er snip­pets for Avengers: Age of Ultron are burnt into my mem­o­ry more clear­ly than any­thing else from the film. Mouth­wa­ter­ing, sup­pos­ed­ly land­mark sce­nar­ios like Bat­man V Super­man or the upcom­ing Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War may appear to sell them­selves but in fact quite the oppo­site is true. Stu­dios need to make their movies seem unmiss­able to guar­an­tee a healthy return on invest­ment, but in doing so they risk falling short of fans’ expectations.

We tend to project our hopes and dreams for cer­tain films onto what­ev­er skele­ton the stu­dio slow­ly con­structs before our eyes. As long as these films exist only in punchy two-minute high­light reels or care­ful­ly man­aged tid­bits of infor­ma­tion, their poten­tial to be spec­tac­u­lar remains infi­nite. Because if there’s one thing film fans are, it’s opti­mistic. Of course, not every block­buster is des­tined to ful­fil its poten­tial, and accord­ing­ly there’s a real dan­ger that a hype mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy will deval­ue the movie going expe­ri­ence. Added to this, it’s far more com­mon for the film­mak­ers, not the mar­ket­ing team, to be blamed for unmet expectations.

Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens more than lived up to its insane hype, but it was unques­tion­ably com­pro­mised by a suc­ces­sion of tan­ta­lis­ing trail­ers that spoiled a num­ber of key moments. Just imag­ine the thrill of watch­ing Han and Chewie’s home­com­ing hav­ing no pri­or knowl­edge of their impend­ing return.

As con­sumers what we real­ly want is sub­stance, not siz­zle. So what if our expec­ta­tions were man­aged more real­is­ti­cal­ly? Would we enjoy these films more? The recent 10 Clover­field Lane gar­nered plen­ty of atten­tion for its viral mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, hit­ting the sweet spot between the ini­tial excite­ment and the inevitable mar­ket­ing fatigue. The film received large­ly pos­i­tive reviews upon its release and post­ed a strong open­ing week­end at the domes­tic box office. Yet 10 Clover­field Lane is very much the excep­tion to the rule.

A lit­tle bit of hype is healthy, but increas­ing­ly it feels like audi­ences are being sold short when it comes to buy­ing into the lat­est block­buster. Stu­dios will con­tin­ue oper­at­ing this way for as long as it makes sense for them to do so finan­cial­ly. The real deci­sion, then, lies with you. Next time a major block­buster is announced three years in advance, will you swal­low the mar­ket­ing hype or hold out in the hope of savour­ing a pur­er view­ing experience?