10 Simple Fixes That Would Make Movie Trailers Awesome Again

5. Do They Really Need To Be Over Two Minutes?

Trailers are long. Like, really long. You're lucky if a tentpole sneak peak doesn't crack two-and-a-half minutes, while teasers are now basically the length trailers used to be. And now Comic-Con footage is more commonly getting released online, it's only getting worse - the trailers for Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad that came out of SDCC last year both broke three minutes.

There's no real reason for this and all too often the editor can't quite sustain interest for the full length (it also irritatingly balloons the already ridiculous amount of extraneous advertising you have to sit through at the cinema). Part of this comes from that misguided sense throughout the movie industry that longer movies are intrinsically more epic (while you couldn't do Lawrence Of Arabia in ninety minutes, the converse isn't necessarily true), with a longer trailer making the movie seem like a bigger deal, although the greater reasoning appears to be more to do with what the extra time affords; you can set-up all the plot and offer a couple of money shots in the space of a-minute-and-a-half, but throwing in an extra sixty seconds plus of footage allows for more jokes, CGI or whatever you're really wanting to push.

So, once again, it's a decision motivated by a desire to show as much of the film as possible, with little thought given to how that can actually hurt expectations for a film. Let's nix that, shall we?