Complaining: Trailer Joke Decay

This, which is why I think the best bet is to just merge with Trailers Always Spoil. The crux of the current Audience Reaction is that the trailer is using all the best jokes and they're not funny anymore when the film comes out, which is just Trailers Always Spoil But More Specific.

I disagree with the Trailers Always Spoil thing. The spoiler in that trope is for plot points. "Ruining a joke" is not the same as "spoiling what happens in the work", except that both can make the experience weaker. But for different reasons.

I fail to see how Trailers Always Spoil is even related aside involving trailers.

I don't see overlap with Trailers Always Spoil, that trope is about spoiling plot twists and important surprises, not just spectacle and funny jokes. I also wouldn't really wanna stretch the definition of Trailers Always Spoil to include those, because that just ends up going back to square one of being an inherently complain-y trope, whereas "advertisement of a work undermines said work by compromising the nature of its narrative" is a more worthy trope because it's directly about the storytelling.

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 26th 2024 at 5:22:52 AM

Maybe Repeated Trailer Scene or Frequently Used Trailer Scene would work better than Overused Trailer Scene if "overused" is too negative of a word.

Either way, I do agree that it isn't related to Trailers Always Spoil aside from both being about what's shown in trailers.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 26th 2024 at 7:49:20 AM

Still same sets of issues I brought up in #25: what counts as "repeated" or "frequently used", and why does it even matter to begin with beyond a vector for complaints?

That's actually a good question, because that sounds like it could potentially be subjective even regardless of whether the audience thinks it's stale.

I suppose we could make it objective with a requirement for the scene(s) to appear in a certain amount of separate trailers (as opposed to the same trailer being played multiple times), but I'm not sure what a good number would be.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 26th 2024 at 8:00:03 AM

What it may overlap with is Signature Scene, which has "centerpiece of the trailer" as the top point.

I think it should remain YMMV since Trailer Joke Decay is an YMMV as-is. Since the topic is negativity, I think the measurement would be when there are comments how marketing material loses hype the further the work's release is (especially due to Development Hell). An objective version may be a different trope entirely (which the "centerpiece of the trailer" examples could be split to).

This whole thing makes me think of the concept of scenes put in works specifically for the trailers. Like, cool shots that exist for marketing and not for the purposes of the story. May be too close to Trailers Always Lie though.

I think "a movie shot made for marketing" can be own thing, but that's up to TLP.

Is that not just Missing Trailer Scene? Or possibly Foiler Footage?

Nah, neither of those fit. But you're right that it's a TLP thing. I just thought I'd mention it since it seems somewhat related to all of this.

I will say, I prefer the current title over any of the suggestions. Overused Trailer Scene and similar titles make it clear that the scenes are overused, but not that the overuse made them less funny. The current at least conveys that the overuse causes "decay" (to become less funny).

I notice that this trope is similar to Overused Running Gag, with the runningness being a result of how many times you see the trailer.

Overused Running Gag requires in-work acknowledgement that the gag was overused. That's not the case with Trailer Joke Decay.

Regarding Signature Scene, if that allows prominently featured trailer scenes, then maybe we should just punt this to Short-Term Projects to clean up the examples that don't mention the audience's opinion, if we already have other tropes for those examples.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 26th 2024 at 9:45:57 AM

to renaming.

Before thinking about rename, I just wanna have established: what exactly do we want to document with this trope? Are we trying to narrow it down to:

• "scene that gets used a lot in trailers" as an objective fact?
• "scene that gets used a lot in trailers" as a colloquial audience perception?
• "scene that gets used a lot in trailers" as something that audiences get sick of?

The nature of that is necessary to pin down (and if the latter two, find a quantifiable paradigm for) before we should think about what to call it.

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 26th 2024 at 8:34:03 AM

I've assumed the conversation was about the last one.

That's what it currently is. It seems like the discussion is mainly about figuring out whether to it's worth splitting off a broader trope about commonly used trailer scenes (without taking whether audiences are tired of it into account), and if so, whether the part about scenes being commonly used would be defined objective objectively (and if so, how we can objectively define the scope of what counts as commonly used).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 27th 2024 at 9:23:31 AM