Are movie trailers too long?

In theaters Friday: After Earth, The East, Now You See Me, The Kings of Summer

New on Blu-ray: Dark Skies, Life is Sweet [Criterion Collection]

As a film fanatic and culture writer, I have a definable love-hate relationship with trailers. Streaming the latest clips out of Hollywood and the world of indie cinema is always a thrill, and yet, it’s so easy to mess them up—when the tone is misleading, when the music is borrowed from another more famous movie you start thinking about midway through, when they give away far too much.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through a trailer, at the end of it, two-and-a-half-minutes later, I just have to throw my hands up, thinking, “Well, I guess I don’t have to watch this movie now. They’ve just shown me pretty much everything that happens.”

In a rare confluence of commerce and creativity, the National Association of Theater Owners wants a new rule limiting trailers to just two minutes. It’s a move that will stir up a hornet’s nest of backlash from the studios, but one that, if approved, I believe will actually improve our previews. A lot.

Trailers used to be a way of tickling the imaginative fancy of the audience, showing us well-crafted glimpses of a new movie and its stars while not spoon-feeding us the entire plot. The magic of the narrative was kindly kept from us, dangled like a carrot, and we liked it. We waited and enjoyed the anticipation. Now trailers are less a fine art and more of a science, engineered to get the most viewers as possible to buy tickets irregardless of what plot twists, jokes, spectacular scenes of action and wonder are trotted in front of the curtain before it even opens.

I believe there are the adventurous among us who gladly take that leap of faith on a film based on little more than the name of the director or the writer and a basic premise. Overlong trailers are not fun. They’re a problem, both creatively for filmmakers battling the cash-counting studios, and experientially for those of us in the audience who want to know what’s “Coming Soon,” without knowing all.