Don’t get me wrong, I loved Spider-Man: Homecoming. The action was great, the tone was perfect and a few of the secrets that were successfully held back were worth waiting for. I couldn’t shake the feeling, however, that my enjoyment of some dramatic scenes like the fight on the ferry or the exchange with a disappointed Stark was tempered by having seen so much of it in pre-release footage. The last thing I now want is for the same thing to happen with The Last Jedi, a film that currently has so much potential and so many possible directions to go in.
Now, I know what you’re thinking; “can’t you just avoid watching the trailers if you don’t want to have things spoiled?”.
In an ideal world, yes, that would be possible. However, with video content embedded virtually everywhere online and with spoilers plastered across the internet, it’s damn difficult to avoid glimpses of new information without abandoning the web, ditching my smartphone and social media, ceasing contact with all my friends who are Star Wars fans and ultimately just moving to Ahch-To where there I imagine spoilers are very hard to come by. Trying to stay away from spoilers is almost a full-time commitment these days; just ask fans of Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.
For those of you now worrying about how the experience of watching The Last Jedi without an advance understanding of the events of the story would be, ask yourself what you’d really be missing out on? Sure a plot summary or new trailer may give you the chance to theorize on the nature of some key details or revelations and to be proved smugly right when you see the movie, but is that genuinely worth passing up two hours of true suspense and excitement for? The story of the film has already been decided and it’ll be there whether you know it in advance or not. Why not go in there with an almost blank slate and enjoy it in the moment?
Unfortunately it’s most likely inevitable that there will be a full theatrical trailer for the film within the next three months. For whatever reasons, the studio will decide that they’re better off giving us two and a half more minutes of footage from The Last Jedi as they attempt to remind us that the film is on the way and entice us all into watching it in cinemas. My dream of a Star Wars experience where virtually anything can happen and where I watch events unfold with the blissful ignorance of Jar Jar Binks in the droid assault on Naboo will probably never come true.
I do hope, however, that the trend of over-exposition will soon be bucked in movie promotion and that trailers can go back to being subtle teases and introductory glances at what’s to come. For now, it seems there’s a fear that fans will vote with their feet and avoid movies in cinemas if they’re not 100% convinced they’ll enjoy it. Until those fears can be allayed, we seem doomed to die suffocated under the weight of story trailers and spoilers for each new blockbuster that starts its slow, two-year crawl to the big screen.
But, who knows; perhaps Lucasfilm will be the ones to break the back of this unfortunate habit and send Star Wars: The Last Jedi into cinemas without giving us another peak under its dark and gloomy veil?
May The Force guide us all into December safe, and spoiler-free…
