The spoiler-heavy movie trailer is one of the most annoying trends in modern cinema for many people – not least directors themselves. In recent years, the likes of Terminator: Genysis’ Alan Taylor and Kingsman: The Golden Circle‘s Matthew Vaughn have revealed that they were left fuming after their films’ marketing departments dropped a massive reveal that they would have preferred been kept secret.
The Last Jedi‘s Rian Johnson won’t be one of those directors, though, as he has made sure to keep a tight hold on the marketing for his upcoming Star Wars movie. While talking to Yahoo, Johnson revealed that he and a producer went to Lucasfilm and instructed them on what they could and couldn’t show in the trailers.
“A year ago, maybe even more than that, my producer Ram [Bergman] and I sat down with the folks at Lucasfilm and said, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to reveal here and there, and this stuff we’re never going to reveal until the movie comes out.’ We came up with a ‘no-fly list’ of, under no circumstances is this shown or that shown. It is a fascinating process. It’s something that for me, just having been a fan my whole life, suddenly being behind the curtain and seeing how it works and seeing how deliberate it is, has been really fascinating.”
It’s lucky for Johnson that Lucasfilm have a good rapport with their directors, as most studios don’t let anyone else interfere with the marketing campaign. That being said, it’s likely that some of their willingness to work with Johnson on the trailers comes from the fact that the Star Wars films are so big that they don’t need to blow major surprises beforehand in order to attract major audiences.
Whatever Johnson’s requirements were, the promotion for The Last Jedi is definitely working so far, as the two trailers released to date have been hugely well received and have got fans even more psyched to return to the galaxy far, far away than they already were.
That said, even Johnson himself took to Twitter before the release of the most recent trailer to warn those who wanted to stay completely spoiler-free to avoid the marketing for the movie. It seems that, though he did his best to preserve the film’s biggest secrets, he understands that even the most carefully edited trailer will be too spoiler-y for some.
We’ll finally get to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi – hopefully unspoiled – when it lands in cinemas on December 15th.
