No spoil­ers please! Are movies taint­ed by marketing?

In ear­ly June, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li announced that ani­ma­tion leg­end Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent – and appar­ent­ly, final – film How Do You Live? (reti­tled The Boy and the Heron for its glob­al release) would be dropped sans mar­ket­ing, but for a sin­gle poster. This some­what dar­ing deci­sion came from pro­duc­er and stu­dio exec­u­tive Toshio Suzu­ki, who said that ​“deep down, I think this is what movie­go­ers latent­ly desire.”

In the same inter­view with Japan­ese mag­a­zine Bungei Shun­ji, Suzu­ki said, ​“There’s an Amer­i­can movie – ah, I almost said the title out loud! – com­ing out this sum­mer around the same time [as How Do You Live?].” He con­tin­ued, ​“They’ve made three trail­ers for it… If you watch all three, you know every­thing that’s going to happen”.

Suzu­ki is not-so-sub­tly name-drop­ping Gre­ta Gerwig’s Bar­bie, a big-bud­get film that’s tak­en a more ​‘Hol­ly­wood’ approach. The film’s expan­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign includ­ed two teasers and one main trail­er, music videos, a coor­di­nat­ed cast reveal, inter­views, an Archi­tec­tur­al Digest Dream­House tour and the like. By the time Bar­bie hits the­atres, audi­ences have essen­tial­ly been drip-fed the entire film.

Though both estab­lished direc­tors, Miyaza­ki and Ger­wig are at odds, rep­re­sent­ing oppo­site extremes on the mar­ket­ing spec­trum. So is Suzu­ki right – do movie­go­ers desire mys­tery, or is it bet­ter to be informed?

Har­ry, a film fan and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, leans strong­ly towards the for­mer. ​“I think the vast major­i­ty of people’s ​‘best’ movie expe­ri­ences have come when they’ve known noth­ing about the film,” he says, before recount­ing a mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence with Ari Aster’s Hered­i­tary. He’d heard it described as ​“a bit weird” (an under­state­ment, he thinks) – and that’s it. ​“It turned out to be one of my favourite films ever, and I won­der if that was just because all the mes­sages, or all the sur­pris­es Ari Aster want­ed to show were very organ­ic to me.”

Most peo­ple sub­scribe to a ​‘no spoil­ers’ man­date, but whether mar­ket­ing falls under that umbrel­la remains dis­put­ed. Har­ry thinks cer­tain trail­ers – even teasers – have ​“shown too much”, not-so-fond­ly cit­ing that of Star Wars: The Rise of Sky­walk­er. ​“The trail­er includ­ed a laugh from Emper­or Pal­pa­tine and it was basi­cal­ly like, ​‘Oh, he’s back.’” The char­ac­ter was thought to be dead after 1983’s Return of the Jedi; the mar­ket­ing itself proved to be a mas­sive spoil­er for the movie.

Bar­bie might well be a sim­i­lar case, and for this rea­son, graph­ic design­er Hed­z­lynn tried to avoid the trail­er for as long as pos­si­ble. She says, ​“At the end of the day, the trail­ers include all the impor­tant plot points.” She con­tin­ues, ​“If they show you less, you’re more intrigued about the film, and when they show you more… there’s noth­ing to be excit­ed about.”

As a design­er, she appre­ci­ates more sta­t­ic forms of pro­mo­tion. ​“My favourite part of the mar­ket­ing is the posters them­selves – the char­ac­ter posters,” she says. But even these have become meme-ified, thanks to the ​‘this Bar­bie is…’ self­ie gen­er­a­tor.

Yet a well-edit­ed trail­er is itself an art form. Patrick, a fic­tion writer, argues that trail­ers don’t have to be spoil­ers. In Barbie’s case, ​“I think the trail­er does a real­ly good job of set­ting up how it is going to be inter­est­ing,” Patrick explains, ​“But I think a neat divid­ing line might be, ​‘Okay, we’re not going to show any­thing in the real world. We’re going to show them head­ing to the real world.’” By doing so, the trail­er would act as a cliffhang­er – with­out divulging any­thing past the film’s first act.

For those who pre­fer a bit of mys­tery, lim­it­ed mar­ket­ing is like­ly more appeal­ing, despite it being a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous busi­ness move. Alex, a pro­fes­sion­al actor, says, ​“It feels very risky to me, and… I don’t ful­ly com­pre­hend the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.” He con­tin­ues, con­sid­er­ing the finan­cial argu­ment both for and against pro­mo­tion. ​“Costs for films are real­ly, real­ly expen­sive right now. The inabil­i­ty for movies to make mon­ey back at the box office is often seen in the mar­ket­ing costs.” To mar­ket or not to mar­ket requires, among oth­er things, a cost analysis.

Miyaza­ki can afford to for­go trail­ers alto­geth­er, as his rep­u­ta­tion – and that of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li – car­ries a weight of its own. Fans know, more or less, what to expect from How Do You Live?, as Miyazaki’s 40-year fil­mog­ra­phy offers a cohe­sive art style and tack­les recur­rent themes includ­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ism and feminism.

Ger­wig, though con­sid­er­ably less estab­lished, has thus far enjoyed a suc­cess­ful career as an actress, writer and direc­tor, with Lady Bird and Lit­tle Women both hav­ing drawn over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive reviews and wide­spread view­er­ship. It’s like­ly for this rea­son – but not this rea­son alone – that Barbie’s bud­get became larg­er-than-life-size, oper­at­ing at a report­ed $100 mil­lion.

Bar­bie is – first and fore­most – a brand, insep­a­ra­ble from her con­sumerist ori­gins. Man­u­fac­tured by toy giant Mat­tel since 1959, Bar­bie has proved to be the company’s most prof­itable inven­tion, with over one bil­lion dolls sold to date. Over 40 titles already exist in the Bar­bie cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, and although Gerwig’s take on ​‘life in plas­tic’ seems like a steep depar­ture from this list, Mat­tel is nonethe­less con­tin­u­ing to reap its rewards.

Main trail­er aside, Barbie’s mar­ket­ing has been incred­i­bly inven­tive, attract­ing the atten­tion of online audi­ences and encour­ag­ing them to engage with the film. James, a speech­writer and ex-tal­ent agent, notes how fan-dri­ven the cam­paign has been (his favourite bit being London’s ​‘Bar­bie-can’ sta­tion). ​“The fact that the pub­lic can’t tell whether a lot of the activ­i­ty is organ­ic or planned is a tes­ta­ment to the atmos­phere they’ve tried to cre­ate,” he argues.

At the end of the day, a film’s dis­tri­b­u­tion team wants one thing: bums on seats. Patrick recog­nis­es this as the ulti­mate objec­tive: “[Mys­tery] is prob­a­bly more appeal­ing to me. But I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it was less effec­tive over­all.” Whether fans enjoy an infor­ma­tion­al over­load ver­sus a more enig­mat­ic approach is moot if both strate­gies result in tick­et sales. But I’d argue that know­ing what fans pre­fer is an essen­tial part of mar­ket research.

So, will audi­ences be see­ing Bar­bie and How Do You Live? in cin­e­mas? James, like many, fell vic­tim to Bar­bie-mania, and is busy plan­ning his Bar­ben­heimer dou­ble fea­ture. ​“See­ing Barbie’s mar­ket­ing has made me more like­ly to see the movie, per­son­al­ly,” he says. “[It’s] not sim­ply regur­gi­tat­ing the film but build­ing on it in inter­est­ing and unex­pect­ed ways.”

Alex argues the reverse, call­ing Barbie’s mar­ket­ing ​“a bit much.” He explains, ​“As the mar­ket­ing has pro­gressed, it’s made me feel less urgent to see it in a cin­e­ma.” Will he be see­ing How Do You Live? (hing­ing on a glob­al release date) on the big screen? ​“Def­i­nite­ly.”

Hed­z­lynn and Har­ry were movie-going regard­less. ​“But maybe I would have enjoyed [Bar­bie] more not know­ing what was going to come,” Har­ry sug­gests. ​“It’s almost like the spir­it of expe­ri­enc­ing a film for the first time is slight­ly dampened.”

There’s a rea­son why Barbie’s been trend­ing on Twit­ter: its cam­paign is one of the most clev­er­ly cre­ative the film community’s seen in recent years, and the box office pro­jec­tions speak for them­selves. But Miyazaki’s mys­tery-dri­ven ​‘mar­ket­ing’ – at least for the film’s Japan­ese ver­sion – has been refresh­ing­ly min­i­mal­ist, pre­serv­ing the intrigue and excite­ment of that first-watch feeling.