Originally, I had [dismissed *Firewall*](http://uwmike.com/articles/2006/02/11/engineering-sexy). My analysis was based on its [miserable trailer](http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/firewall/) and a mountain of other people’s [negative opinions](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/firewall/).

And so, it was with a certain level of despair that I was dragged by [Jeff](http://jeffaho.com/) and [others](http://tron09.com/) out to Galaxy for that late-night first-weekend screening. As it turned out, Firewall was a good deal *less bad* than I’d anticipated—indeed, an entertaining way to spend 2 hours and $7.50.

What was the difference between the trailer and the picture?

### Trailers That Spoil Are Bad

The modern movie trailer has only a single purpose: *sell as many seats as possible during the theatrical run*. It’s almost hilarious to watch the “trailer” on the Back To The Future DVD. It’s not a trailer at all; it’s a shot of Michael J. Fox in a pair of sunglasses. Before the multiplex, there was no competition between films, and thus, there was no trailer.

It seems recent years have seen marketing departments so desperate to draw an audience that they’re willing to scupper a film’s plot to make a more engaging promotion.

[Spiderman 2](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316654/) is the clearest example: *Every* significant plot turn is right there in the trailer; even the emotional moments, if you include the TV spots. You’ve got an awesome trailer selling a film that’s little more than the awesome trailer with two hours worth of other stuff padding it out to feature-length.

The ones to buck this trend are Pixar. [The Incredibles](http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/the_incredibles/) trailer manages to give away little more than the premise of the film, and yet still had me totally psyched for the release. Is it just that they’re Pixar, and fanboys like me will get psyched no matter what they do?

### Trailers That Misrepresent Are Bad

Other times, studio management will a given target audience as too small, and market their film to a different segment.

[Fight Club](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/) is the example here. Brilliant psychological thriller. [Box office disaster](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/fightclub.html). Why? [A trailer](http://www.movie-list.com/f/fight-club.html) that sells it as some kind of office-space-esque anti-establishment b-movie brawler flick. Oh, Fight Club *is* anti-establishment, but that trailer brought entirely the wrong crowd to the theatre.

Sure, it’s a film with action, but it’s not an *action film*, not by a long shot. Action fans didn’t get it and the rest of us weren’t there. (Well, I was also well under 18 at the time, so I probably wasn’t there for other reasons…)

### Spoilers, Summaries, and Teasers

At a live stageplay, the program summarizes the entire plot. The joy is not in being surprised by the events, it’s in seeing a well-known story unfold anew.

A film is not like this. Seeing a film for the first time is an irreproducible experience, even if the film’s conclusion doesn’t hold some special revelation. Obviously, those brilliant thrillers like [The Usual Suspects](http://www.movie-list.net/classics/the-usual-suspects.mov) and [Memento](http://www.robodan.com/trailers/wave3/Memento.mov) are a special category, but even movies with the most obvious plots hold a certain pleasure in seeing them unravel for the first time.

### Firewall: The Movie & Firewall: The Trailer

In a surprising twist, the people who cut together the trailer managed to make neither of the mistakes described above. In spite of its prominence in the promotion, the subject of identity theft is not (unfortunately, perhaps) a theme of the film.

So my [complaints drawn from the trailer](http://uwmike.com/articles/2006/02/11/engineering-sexy) are largely bogus.

I say unfortunately because the plot that replaces the one hinted at by the trailer might have been a more interesting one. [Andrew Wright's quote](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=30672) is brilliant:
> For all the blarney about hacking and up-to-the-minute tech geekery, it’s really just the same old story about protecting the homestead from rustlers in black hats.

Wright is correct, of course. But I *was* impressed with the level of technical believability presented here. Making a scanner out of pieces of an iPod and a fax machine? Don’t cry foul until you’ve see the camera that Matthias Wandel made [out of an old scanner](http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/scanner.html).

I don’t reckon I’ll ever be purchasing Firewall on DVD. The first viewing was entertaining; a second might be more trying. [The Island](http://uwmike.com/articles/2005/08/13/the-island), this is not.

So what am I saying? Don’t judge a film by its reviews *or* its trailer? Basically, yeah.

And that’s where blogs come in. Would I really trust the opinion of RottenTomatoes on a film as unusual as [*These Girls*](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439008/)? Nope. For a review of that, I’ll be looking to the commenters at [Whedonesque](http://whedonesque.com/).

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 8:45 pm to Film.