Are movie trailers becoming better than the actual movies?

I would argue that it’s not that the trailers are getting better, it’s that they increasingly are put together by people who are completely disconnected from the movie. It’s long been the case that trailers aren’t done by the directors of the movie, but by studios. This is why trailers sometimes reveal critical plot spoilers, or contain seemingly big moments…that actually got cut from the movie because they didn’t really fit the story. None of that is new.

But it does seem like the ‘art’ of putting trailers together is becoming more and more formulaic. They know how to randomly select moments, use music and tempo and then string them together with other moments to imply something completely different than the movie actually is trying to do.

There’s a million recent stories where directors see the trailers only after their public release and their reaction is basically “WTF is that? That’s not what the story of the movie is about at all!?!”

Sometimes that absolutely is the case. Trailers can be downright misleading.

I think it’s that the films are often pretty lame these days, combined with, yes, the trailers often revealing practically everything about the plot. Or worse, as @Entropy mentioned, actually showing a better plot than the actual film has.

Sometimes the trailers give away major plot turns, and spoil the movie (Children Of Men is a good example)
Sometimes trailers include scenes that didn’t make into the finished movie, or alternate versions of scenes (Inglourious Basterds and Spiderman are good examples)

To be fair, it’s easier to make a good trailer than it is to make a good movie.

You just have to capture the audience’s attention for a trailer. For a movie, you need the whole package.

I know this has been about for a while, but it still makes me laugh:
Shining

They set you up for the movies epic fail most times.

@filmfann That is so funny. Great analogy. One would think based on that trailer of The Shining was a “feel good” story to take the kids and the grandparents to see.