Here is another pet peeve of mine. People who criticize people who criticize a movie, based on the trailer. They’ll argue “You can’t judge a movie by it’s trailer!” Some people will even get all superior and on a high horse about “I’ll wait until the actual movie comes out before I judge it!” As of they’re being so much more intelligently open-minded or something. Please. Get over yourself.

OF COURSE you can judge a movie by its trailer. That is literally what trailers are for. This is not an opinion, that is their sole stated purpose. You can look it up!

Trailers consist of a series selected shots from the film being advertised. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these excerpts are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the film but in abbreviated form and usually without producing spoilers.

DUH. There you go. Their purpose is to attract an audience. Meaning that they hope that after watching the trailer, you will want to see the movie.

And notice how whenever someone praises a film trailer, no one says “You can’t judge a movie by its trailer!”

For some reason, that only seems to apply to anyone who doesn’t like a movie trailer. If a trailer gets you all hyped up to see a particular film, that’s fine. But if the same trailer has the opposite effect on you, suddenly you’re being unfair and judgmental. How does that make sense?!?

And, of course, that doesn’t mean that your judgment of a movie based on that trailer is always going to be correct. Hollywood has its tricks for making trailers look good. I’ve seen plenty of bad films that had awesome trailers, and plenty of good films that had crappy trailers. But that doesn’t change the fact that trailers are made for judging.

And while the “don’t judge a movie unless you’ve seen it” argument sounds logical, it’s simply not practical. Unless you have unlimited time and money you have to make decisions on how to spend your time and money. That includes choosing what movies you will see, before you see them. I personally don’t have the time or inclination to watch every single movie that sounds like it has an interesting premise. So the main thing that I judge what films to watch is…you guessed it, THE TRAILERS!

So next time someone says that you can’t judge a movie by the trailer, please slap them. Hard.