Speaking of superheroes, there's a little movie called "Iron Man" you may have heard of.
It's fascinating to compare the various online marketing strategies for potential blockbusters that already have brand recognition and some semblance of a fan base. On the one side you have to ask, "Is this even necessary?" Clearly Warner Bros. thinks it is for "Dark Knight" as a way to cushion already sky-high interest. But Paramount didn't think so when it came to promoting "Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Aside from faux-amateur YouTube videos like the Giant Lego Boulder, the Indy team was focused terrestrially on an eye-catching billboard campaign, and of course the trailer. When you've got two generations worth of fans who salivate when they hear the opening notes of a theme song, it kinda frees you up on the marketing end.
Propagating the trailer is something we've seen at lot more of this year, or at least it feels that way. That was the case with "Iron Man," which went the opposite route of "Dark Knight" and counted on a great viral movie trailer to make the case for the film. This was particularly shrewd considering "Iron Man" doesn't have the mystique and popularity of a "Spider-Man" or the "X-Men" franchise. But it's a great example of how a kick-ass trailer (along with investing in a top-notch, well chosen cast and focusing on creating a great action film) can transcend fair-to-middling interest in a 40-year-old character and produce box office gold. Clever tie-ins with companies like Audi certainly helped raise the volume for "Iron Man," but it was the trailer -- and more importantly the number of people forwarding the trailer to friends -- that really made the difference.
On the flip side of this coin, we have "Speed Racer." The marketing campaign for this movie was, top to bottom, a disaster, as far as I'm concerned. The posters were confusing, and I doubt I'm in the minority when I say that the trailer wasn't very good. Of course neither is the movie, and your marketing efforts can only go so far if you're trying to make a sow's ear look like a silk purse.
There are all sorts of inherent perils when making a live-action film of a cult classic cartoon, and it was apparent from the trailer that Warner Bros. and the Wachowski brothers missed some pretty big points. Audiences have become numb to flashy, colorful gimmicks and more adept at reading between the lines (in this case horrible lines of dialogue). When you show a universe in which the laws of physics don't exist, it makes it difficult to create dramatic tension. So we have a bad movie with a bad trailer, compounded by truly mystifying viral marketing choices -- like "Speed Racer's" sponsored "gift" Facebook campaign. I don't know about you, but I don't even accept non-sponsored gifts from Facebook friends, let alone ones promoting a movie.
At the end of the day the marketing succeeded in sucking the life out of whatever interest there was in the film, and the proof is in the pudding: "Speed Racer" opened behind "Iron Man" (in its second week) and a screwball comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. What's truly astonishing is that this was done by the same studio that's marketing "Dark Knight!"