Spider-Man 3

Movie trailers are all about subtext. Which is to say: what you’re watching is always about something more than what you’re watching. The trailer synechdochically implies the movie. And if, at the end of the trailer, you aren’t left feeling that there’s something more to what you’ve just seen than what you saw, then the trailer hasn’t done its job. To be a good trailer, it has to leave you wanting more.

It’s interesting, then, to watch trailers for movies that we already know don’t have any subtext themselves. (We can venture a pretty good guess in this case, because neither of the previous two films in the Spider-Man series had any subtext either.) The trailer editors have a choice. They can imply subtext that isn’t really in the movie, or they can just go for broke and show you parts of the movie that clearly reveal the uninteresting story.

Nobody with half a brain, whether they’ve read the comics or not, is going to show up to see Spider-Man
3 wondering what’s going to happen.  This is not a bad thing; at least everyone gets what they pay for.

This movie appeals to that part of the human subconscious that wants to see another Spider-Man movie, for some reason.

Spider-Man 3 trailer