toldtales.jpeg
Previews have had an air of desperation about them lately—the idea's that since mainstream audiences don't like surprises, movie studios try to show just about everything they can in a film's advertising campaign. (Not coincidentally, and a little depressingly, this also touches on one of the reasons Brave works so well—that film's ads show almost nothing that isn't in the first act, which means when the story takes a fairly unexpected turn a third of the way into the film, audiences get to have that increasingly rare sensation of not knowing what's going to happen next.)

And then, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Brave, you have The Amazing Spider-Man, which has had so many online clips and trailers that it was only a matter of time until somebody spliced it all together, assembling what's essentially a 25-minute-long cut of the film. Now Sony's running around in a panic pulling the video because whoops! They don't want people seeing 20 percent of their movie, for free, before it's even released.

I haven't watched the footage—I live in constant, cowardly fear of spoilers, and I'm seeing The Amazing Spider-Man in a few minutes at a press screening anyway—but I'm kind of delighted this is happening. It sucks for the filmmakers, and it sucks for audiences, but mostly it sucks for Sony. Hopefully they're realizing that choking the internet with a ridiculous amount of footage maybe isn't the best idea they've ever had, and hopefully other studios are paying attention too.