After watching only seconds of Disney’s new trailer for Winnie the Pooh, which features copious honey references, a so-depressed-it’s-kind-of-funny Eeyore, and as much nostalgia as possible, I looked into purchasing a ticket for opening night. Apparently the pre-order service is not provided six months in advance. My expectations for the film are unreasonably high, so high that it will inevitably be a letdown. I know this a full six months before its release. Yet for once I refuse to blame myself. Instead, my anger will be directed at the real culprit—the trailer.
Let me get this out of the way: I am the world’s biggest apologist for terrible movies. Maybe I have a humanist bent. Maybe because I pay $10 to watch it, I want to feel against all logic that the movie was worth it. Maybe (OK, likely), I’m an idiot. Whatever the case, I can find something to enjoy in almost every movie, regardless of genre. Marmaduke? There was a dog wearing sunglasses. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Well, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just sucked.
Regardless, the reason people like me enjoy these movies is that there are no lofty expectations. Take Rambo. I had no problem watching a 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone kill hundreds of terrorists in war-torn Burma because even the trailer had acknowledged how awful that film would be. Most trailers make no attempts to raise expectations—they just throw together some action shots from the movie and slap on a release date.
The Winnie the Pooh trailers of the world, on the other hand, promise something epic. They start with a nostalgic character from our childhood, add some grand, sweeping aphorisms about life, and mix in some acoustic indie-rock in the background. They do their jobs almost too well. By raising expectations up to a ridiculous level, they bring an audience in—but with the catch that no one will feel the film lived up to what its hype promised.
Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, the 2009 adaptation of the beloved 10-sentence children’s book by Maurice Sendak, drove home this point for me. (On a side note, writer-director Jonze, who spent almost ten years making the film, apparently spent less than an hour of that time actually writing dialogue.) The trailer boasted that “inside all of us is hope … adventure … a Wild Thing,” as Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” blared in the background.
This was, of course, enough to make me call it the greatest movie ever, sight unseen. The opening weekend crowds proved that I was not alone. Where the Wild Things Are, a PG-rated film, was more popular with adults over 18 years old than with families. It enjoyed a highly successful opening and won first place at the box office.
But then something unexpected happened. The audience was not impressed. Box office sales dropped off dramatically after its initial release. Most reviewers found it serviceable, and it earned 77 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But only 59 percent of viewers reported they liked the film—even though we had been set up for a classic. So what happened? The curse of a great trailer had struck again. Audience expectations had reached unreasonable levels, and fans weren’t ready to accept anything less than perfection.
The same fate likely awaits Winnie the Pooh, no matter how good the film may be. So as I watch the trailer for a third time—watching Pooh beg for honey, listening to Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know,” and waxing nostalgic for my childhood—I can’t help but shake the feeling I will leave the theater this summer feeling like Eeyore: disappointed and wondering how I was pulled in again.
Amazing article.