How can the trailers for Star Wars: Episode IX avoid the kind of fan backlash seen with The Last Jedi? Making a trailer is more of an art than it is an exact science, with studios carefully parsing every shot for potential impact, ensuring the trailer is as effective as possible and whets viewers’ appetites.

That’s especially the case with massive franchises like Marvel, DC, and of course Star Wars. These have committed fan-bases who pore over split-seconds of footage, attempting to work out what it means for the story and the franchise’s overarching narrative. As such, studios have to strike a careful balance; on the one hand, they want to show enough to get people excited, but at the same time they also want to ensure spoilers are kept to an absolute minimum. A single slip can potentially result in the fanbase working out the film’s entire plot.

But there’s another side to this as well. Trailers actually shape the narrative that builds up around the film. A good trailer generates excitement, builds up a sense of anticipation, and gets certain subjects talked about. It essentially prepares the viewer for the experience of watching the actual film, cluing them in on what to expect. That’s not always appreciated, and as a result trailers - even well-received ones - can backfire if they don’t quite set the film up correctly. So how can Lucasfilm avoid that mistake?

  • This Page: Star Wars: Episode IX Can’t Be A Mystery Box Page 2: Did The Trailers For The Last Jedi Harm The Film?

What To Expect From Star Wars 9’s Trailers

By now, Lucasfilm has settled into a steady routine when it comes to marketing a Christmas Star Wars release. Marketing will really kick off at this year’s Star Wars Celebration in April, and can be expected to include a trailer drop. While there’ll no doubt be a lot of Star Wars news at the event, Star Wars: Episode IX will be the centerpiece, with a panel to showcase new footage and details. The film will be in the thick of post-production by April, meaning there’ll be a handful of finished shots (with completed visual effects). What’s more, an April release will ensure the Episode IX trailer accompanies Avengers: Endgame, giving it maximum reach. Going by previous Lucasfilm trailers, don’t expect a focus on the plot; the emphasis will be on the character journeys.

Assuming Lucasfilm follow what has become their usual pattern, this trailer drop will be followed by a behind-the-scenes reel that premieres at D23 and SDCC in July. A second trailer will release closer to the film, most likely in October when tickets become available. That’s when the marketing campaign will kick up a notch, with Lucasfilm releasing a flurry of TV spots to help generate excitement and get people to purchase tickets.

Star Wars 9 Can’t Be A Mystery Box

Unfortunately, Lucasfilm’s marketing approach for the Sequel Trilogy has been what J.J. Abrams calls a “Mystery Box.” This is an approach where the film is treated as a mystery, with the trailers and TV spots revealing as little about the plot as possible. The idea is that viewers get excited about the possibilities, and thus turn up to see how things really play out.

The best example was the marketing for Cloverfield, which kicked off with a strange teaser revealing a release date but not its title or stars. Viewers speculated it could be anything from a Lost spinoff to a reboot of Godzilla. But there are a lot of problems with the Mystery Box, and even for Abrams it seems to be seeing diminishing returns. The Force Awakens was essentially a Mystery Box wrapped up as an entire plot, and that caused major issues for the franchise down the line; it raised questions that Lucasfilm clearly hadn’t decided on the answers to, and the resolution was all pushed back to The Last Jedi.

Star Wars: Episode IX simply cannot be a Mystery Box. Star Wars is a known commodity; audiences already have a good sense of what to expect when they walk in the doors. Besides which, in the case of Episode IX, the film is already weighed down with so much expectation. This movie has to justify the entire Sequel Trilogy, explaining why it’s an essential part of the Skywalker Saga. It has to try to find a way of pulling a divided fanbase back together. And, adding even more pressure, it has to offer a poignant and heartfelt farewell to the late, great Carrie Fisher.

Page 2: Did The Trailers For The Last Jedi Harm The Film?

Did The Last Jedi’s Trailers Fuel The Backlash?

The Last Jedi was a box office hit, but it’s a matter of record that the film has divided the fanbase. One of the main reasons was because the trailers followed the Abrams formula, failing to prepare viewers for the final film. They concealed as much about the movie as possible, revealing only the most basic story beats and depending on a general sense of intrigue. Unfortunately, though, one of the key problems with the Mystery Box is that fans will start to come up with their own answers to the questions that the trailers are posing. When they finally see the film, they may well prefer their versions to the actual theatrical cut. That was certainly the case with Luke Skywalker; why did he want the Jedi to end, and if that was his goal, why was he training Rey? Fans pored over the trailers and the tie-ins, falling in love with concepts such as Gray Jedi, and the film itself failed to live up to those heightened expectations.

Part of the problem was that the trailers hadn’t even shown the movie’s general tone and style. Director Rian Johnson wanted to take a subversive approach to Star Wars, but there’s barely a hint of that in the trailers. As a result, where Johnson wanted to turn the tropes upside-down, viewers turned up expecting to see Star Wars played straight. The disjoint between the film and audience expectations is best serve with an illustration; in one key scene, Luke is presented his lightsaber by Rey, but just tosses it away and walks off. It works perfectly in the context of The Last Jedi itself; but viewers had no warning to expect anything like this. They’d been waiting to see how that scene would play out for the last two years, the trailers had invited them to imagine it, and then Johnson basically poked fun at those expectations. Worse still, viewed in the context of the franchise as a whole, to many fans it all felt like a dismissal of everything Star Wars had been since 1977.

Star Wars 9’s Trailers Must Sell What The Movie Really Is

What kind of film will Star Wars: Episode IX be? Will it be a remake of a classic Star Wars blockbuster, carefully constructed as a homage to everything that has gone before it? Or will it continue in the pattern of The Last Jedi, attempting to turn the franchise upside-down? Whatever the truth may be, the trailers must at least hint at it. They can’t just raise questions - they have to begin to provide  answers. That doesn’t mean that all the plot twists have to be telegraphed in the trailers; rather, it just means that viewers must be able to enter the theater already knowing what kind of film they’re about to watch.

This is best illustrated by comparing the Sequel Trilogy’s trailers to one from another blockbuster franchise, Avengers: Infinity War. There, the trailers summed up the protagonist’s motives, established a rough flow of the film, and gave a sense of the stakes. But so much was still held back, from the death of Gamora, to the final snap. Some scenes from the trailers were seriously misleading, with the Hulk shown participating in the Battle of Wakanda. And yet, for all that’s the case, it worked. People walked in knowing roughly what to expect, and yet Marvel still held plenty of surprises back.

That’s the kind of marketing that Star Wars: Episode IX needs. Right now, everybody already has their own idea of how things should play out, and of how Kylo Ren should be defeated (or redeemed). The trailers have to begin to clue people in to the real story; they have to start opening the Mystery Box that Episode IX already is, and giving viewers a chance to see a little bit of what lies inside. They don’t have to reveal all the secrets - but they just have to start offering some clues.

More: Theory: How Star Wars 9 Can Make Rey A Skywalker (Without A Last Jedi Retcon)

  • Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker Release Date: 2019-12-20