As another annual San Diego Comic Con ends with another week full of preordained previews, announcements, and sizzle reels, this seems as good a time as any to talk about something that has been lost in the saturation-level media coverage that surrounds each and every remotely major studio release these days. I am talking of course about the element of surprise. I'm not talking about plot spoilers regarding upcoming films, or even the obsessive need for news outlets to report on every plot detail of an upcoming film so that one has to literally live in a cave to avoid knowing too much. Those are indeed issues, but I'm talking about something even more basic. I'm talking about the idea of discovering the very existence of a film the old fashioned way. Be it through a trailer that you didn't expect, or a poster that you didn't see coming, something very precious has been lost over the last fifteen years as the mainstream entertainment press has turned into a full-time, year-round Comic-Con. We don't discover films we were hoping we might see via actual pre-movie trailers, or even through movie magazines like Premiere or Starlog. Now they are preordained, with their posters and trailers given online *premieres* that are treated as actual news by film sites the world over. Maybe it's the cranky old man in me talking, but there is something very special about discovering these films at the theater. Which brings me to the question: When was the last time I was truly surprised by a piece of film marketing?
