Garoo

Either I don’t understand at all what James Cameron’s new movie, Ghosts of the Abyss (w), will be, or the trailer is among the worst of the century. But I don’t have any trouble picturing the Disney marketing team panicking at the idea of making a trailer about a documentary (my god! selling a documentary! making people come and see it! and there’s not even a script! it just can’t be done!) and picking up whatever they can to give out the impression something happens in the movie. Adventure, the trailer says. That’s movie marketing for you.

What better opportunity to quote a piece from Télérama’s excellent interview with George Clooney, about Solaris (translated back to English by me, apologies to George):

With James Cameron as a coproducer, they expected a spectacular science-fiction movie, and they got a metaphysical tale… Studios don’t know how to “sell” this kind of movie. The marketing people worked like amateurs: they focused on the few seconds when I’m naked and made up a hoax saying the movie would be forbidden to minors. Bullshit!

(He may, or may not, have really said bullshit. How would I know. But I think he could have.)