Trailers That Contained Big-Time Spoilers

Eddie the Eagle is a classic sports story, full of unlikely triumph and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Despite childhood illness, a discouraging father, social ostracization, and the reluctance of the British Olympic officials, Eddie Edwards makes his way to the Olympics as a world-class ski jumper. He breaks records. He makes his nation proud. His mother watches, teary-eyed, as her long-held faith in her son finally pays off.

Unfortunately, you can glean all that from just watching the trailer. Every single major beat of the movie is present within it, from the broad strokes to the particular details. We see, for example, Eddie's mother offer him an old box to "keep his medals in" as a hopeful child, and then, one minute later, we see her bring it out once more as he heads off to represent the United Kingdom on the world stage. That's the sort of emotional texture meant to stay within the movie, and the absolute peak of the trailer's absurdity. When it ends, you don't feel enticed into checking the film out due to its advertising — you feel like you've already seen it.

"Every evening," a drunk and melancholy Zac Efron murmurs in the Charlie St. Cloud trailer, "I play catch with my dead brother." Shots of sunlit fields ensue, the St. Cloud boys within them, idyllic in their Red Sox gear. Efron is an all-American hunk, and little Sam is a pug-nosed ragamuffin who hasn't quite grown into his oversized catcher's mitt. But alas, as the trailer has informed you, Sam is dead.

Charlie must live on — but, as we learn, he simply, tragically, cannot. We then meet Tess, a bold young sailor who lures Charlie back to life in the present. We see them fall in love. We see precious, ghostly Sam encourage his brother. We see fear grip Charlie's heart as it is revealed that Tess is in trouble — the kind of trouble Charlie can save her from only if he lives in the moment. "The Coast Guard called off the search!" townspeople warn. "No one can survive these waters!" But Charlie doesn't care. He rips off his shirt and dives into the choppy sea, choosing, once and for all, the present over the past. It is only after the trailer ends that you realize you have seen nearly the entire movie. The Charlie St. Cloud trailer is, more than an anything, a short film unto itself, complete with a stirring final shot of the brothers staring into the sunset. "We'll always be brothers," Efron intones. You nearly expect "THE END" to fade in.

Taika Watiti's psychedelic take on the Asgardian hero brought a lot of new things to the MCU. Characters like Valkyrie and Hela, longtime staples of Marvel comics, finally stepped onto the silver screen. Architecture and costumes ripped straight from the work of Jack Kirby paid homage to his masterful work. Comic diehards delighted as Skurge was, well, his most Skurge-y self. It was a whirlwind celebration of all that makes superheroes so entertaining, chock-full of new characters, locations, and Technicolor spaceships.

One character stood above them all — literally. The Hulk wasn't just part of Ragnarok, but a linchpin of the plot as a whole. Thor's joy at seeing him in the arena — his instantly memorable scream of "YES!" when he sees the big green galoot emerge from the shadows — is basically how the audience felt. The Hulk! In space! Fighting against Thor, and then alongside Thor, and ultimately a whole horde of Asgardian zombies and a giant wolf! Now imagine how much more glorious all of that would have been if we hadn't known from trailers and TV spots that the Hulk was going to be there. Hype was already building when marketing revealed his presence — did we really need to know he'd be there to get our butts in seats? Unfortunately, we'll never have an answer, but at least we'll always have him fighting Hela's army on the Bifrost to the righteous thunder of Led Zeppelin.

A lot of Cast Away is implied in its title. Even without seeing a single trailer, poster, or TV spot, one can guess that it's about someone lost on a deserted island, struggling to survive both the elements and the crushing isolation. That is, in fact, most of what the 2000 Tom Hanks story is about — plus, of course, a memorably charismatic volleyball. It's the kind of movie that depends upon a powerhouse performance to sell its simple premise and limited cast list — the islander must be able to entertain and enliven without anyone to play off or much variation in setting.

There is, in fact, only one factor that looms as large as the protagonist's performance in a story like Cast Away: the question of whether or not the eponymous castaway is rescued. This is the one question mark the audience maintains until the end. Will starvation get our hero? Perhaps the madness of solitude? If they make their way back to civilization, will it be under their own power? Will they die in the attempt? 

Cast Away managed to, shockingly enough, squander this ambiguity by including shots of a bearded Hanks building a boat and then, most frustratingly, someone telling him how after four years of absence, he had been declared dead. The movie is still worth watching, even with this loss of suspense — but it beggars belief that the marketing team thought they couldn't make a trailer without spoiling the ending.

Jonas lives in a perfectly serene community, where he is set to come of age and join its peaceful ranks in an assigned role. There is no conflict, no cruelty, and no injustice — but there was, once, and Jonas is assigned to learn about it from a man known as the Giver. The slow crumbling of Jonas' tranquil life is the process at the heart of the story. First he realizes that the daily injections he receives blunt his emotions, then he learns that there are colors beyond black, white, and grey, and finally, that those who pose a threat to the order of his world are murdered. 

The gradual nature of Jonas' awakening is what has made The Giver a staple of school libraries for decades now — and it is totally destroyed by the trailer. Every single major moment is spoiled within two minutes, from the lack of color to the fact that Jonas' father is the one who administers the community's lethal injections. The only thing, in fact, left to the audience's imagination is Jonas' fate once he learns the truth, which is the least important part of the book. Diverging from source material isn't a necessarily bad thing, but the filmmakers were clearly aiming to turn The Giver into an action-packed dystopia, and, well, those kinds of stories depend upon a certain amount if suspense that the trailer doesn't allow for.

Fairy tales, Into the Woods argues, get a lot messier once you get past Happily Ever After. The first chunk of the musical-turned-movie is as lovely and whimsical as you might expect, sure — full of girls heading to grandma and wives who long for children. Magic ensues, and all, for a time, is well. Cinderella gets to go to the ball, magic beans are sprouted, and the baker and his wife fulfill their promise to a witch, who in turn promises them a pregnancy. All good, right?

Well, no — and that is, of course, the point of the story, and what made the original stage musical such a sensation. Things unravel quickly, and though it is ultimately still a story about love and adventure, it finds time to examine just how difficult those things are to keep hold of. The trailer revealed every inch of this struggle, cheapening the story's descent into chaos. We see glimpses of a post-slipper Cinderella doubting her success, the Prince cheating on her with the baker's wife, and multiple shots of Meryl Streep's witch pleading with Rapunzel, whom, we are meant to learn to our surprise, she truly loves. The trailer denies us the pleasure of watching this happen with only the knowledge of the classic, sunny stories to guide us, and thus denies us the point of the story. Happily ever after eludes even the audience when it comes to this film.