milanbaros said:
The speed racer trailer set of all sorts of crap movie ahoy alarms in my brain. In business terms the studio really should've recognised that because I think it happened to a lot of people.
I am seeing a lot of comments from people who dismissed or were skeptical of the movie because of trailers, but loved the movie when they ended up seeing it for whatever reason. Certainly supports that the trailers were off the mark.
But, I think Warner had a tough job with respect to the trailers, especially the first teaser. The movie is so visually out there that when you can only showcase a limited snippet I think its difficult to show anything that without the context of the whole movie doesn't look too crazy or overly cheesy. The movie itself eases you into the visual style
slightly more, and once you are immersed into that style it is less prone to seeming "wrong".
Ultimately, I think the trailers for the movie could have been improved if they came across a little less hardcore. The action and text taglines seemed to pitch to an older hardcore audience (and probably turned off parents with younger children), but the visual style appears geared to a younger or more whimsical crowd (turning off those who like their action as real as it gets), which means they fell into the gap of nothing in between.
I think it would have helped to pitch more squarely at the family audience which would have brought in a bigger family crowd, and probably would have avoided a lot of online cynicism and criticism. They could have perhaps achieved this with the inclusion of some more light hearted music and moments, highlighted Speed as an aspirational character for kids more, and reduced the "From the makers of the Matrix Trilogy" angle.
Hindsight is a great thing I guess.
