There Are Too Many Damn Previews Now

By Jack Mirkinson | September 16, 2019 | 6:35pm

Splinter Movie Club

We already know that movies are too long now. But you know what is also too long now? Previews.

I went to see Hustlers over the weekend—definitely recommend, J. Lo lives up to the hype—and there were at least eight previews. This, of course, is after the Noovie pre-show which is more previews and a bunch of ads, and then a couple more ads.

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There were previews for:

—Jexi, a movie where Adam DeVine gets Fatal Attractioned by the Siri equivalent in his phone (gender politics looked extremely suspect)

—Ad Astra, where Brad Pitt has to go into space to deal with his daddy issues (looked Very Prestigious but also quite boring, who knows though)

—Queen & Slim, where Daniel Kaluuya kills a cop and then goes on the run with Jodi-Turner Smith (looks possibly good but also possibly very bad)

—Harriet, the Harriet Tubman biopic (Cynthia Erivo as Harriet will no doubt be good, the rest of the movie looks meh but I am withholding judgment)

—Countdown, a horror movie where an app tells you how long you have to live (no thanks)

—21 Bridges, where Chadwick Boseman is a cop going after a guy who keeps killing cops (not Daniel Kaluuya, also no thanks)

—Like a Boss, where Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne are business rivals with Salma Hayek and hijinks ensue (OK this one looked funny, I laughed a lot)

—Motherless Brooklyn, based on the Jonathan Lethem book and starring Ed Norton (looks OK, but remember when someone died while making this movie? Probably cursed)

I might be forgetting one or two others.

I love previews. I try to never miss the previews if I can help it. But this is too many previews. It was nearly 30 minutes before the movie even started.

Anecdotal evidence (I feel like this has happened at lots of movies I’ve been to recently, also Caitlin Schneider at Splinter said she agrees with me, also apparently a survey agrees with me) tells me I am right. Pare back the previews! Please!

P.S. I also hate that when you watch a trailer on YouTube there’s a whole ad for the trailer at the beginning of the trailer. I know I’m watching the trailer! I clicked on the trailer for god’s sake!