Movie studios are so terrified of spoiling a movie that they're ending up spoiling the movie anyway.
They've become so paranoid that they're giving away too much when a movie's previewed or spoken about on a TV show that they're only revealing
the most arbitrary scenes which gives the impression that the movie's crap.
I've been noticing it on the Graham Norton show big-time. I can honestly say that there hasn't been a single preview on the show this year that's made me want to see the film because all of the clips have been so generic and underwhelming.
The worst was a preview for Oblivion with Tom Cruise. In case you missed the episode ... Tom Cruise was a guest with Olga Kurylenko who stars in the flik with him.
The show previewed a scene of Tom flying through space in a craft and that was it - him flying and darting with Olga and nothing more - as if we haven't seen
that in a million other movies. There was no sign of anything new nor unique about the film. The episode also featured a preview of Gerard Butler in Olympus Has Fallen and it wasn't any better.
Of course it isn't Graham Norton's fault nor any other show that does movie previews. As far as I know it's the studios who are so controlling and prescriptive - they're clearly giving shows such little choice it's impossible to get something more interesting.
It's the same thing with interviews and cast who can't talk about certain aspects of the film - often you can actually see that they're in a state of terror in case the studio comes down on them for saying what they shouldn't.
Either studios need to lighten up and share some cool stuff in their previews or they may as well stop bothering because the way things are there's no point to what they're delivering. I'd rather be entertained by something totally different than see some random preview that's been compiled by a Scrooge.
The studios seem to think that by being so stingy they'll get more people to see the film - a ludicrous perspective.
Obviously the more interesting and exciting the preview is, the more we'll want to see it - it's beyond nuts that they don't know this!