Why I’m Not Watching The Justice League Movie Clips

It’s less than 2 weeks until the release of Justice League, the latest Warner Bros films in the DCEU following this summer’s Wonder Woman.

As we get closer to the movies release, more and more promotional material is finding its way on to the internet. Although we’ve already had a large chunk of marketing for Justice League in the form of movie trailers and movie posters, we’re now at the stage where Warner Bros are releasing movie clips and promotional scenes from the movie, they've just released seven!

I won’t be watching them and this MoviePush blogpost explains why.

I’m completely up on the marketing of Justice League, I’ve seen all the teasers, trailers and posters so far. I love viewing this stuff, I love movies and I work in marketing so seeing how a movie is marketed is right up my street. However, I also don’t want to ruin the movie-going experience itself and I think watching movie clips beforehand can be really detrimental to the first viewing of a movie.

I used to obsess over movie trailers and movie clips ahead of a film’s release, I’d watch them repeatedly trying to find any hidden details or second guess what might have led to a certain scene or sequence. The problem with this though, was when I finally watched the film I found myself constantly thinking about (and somewhat waiting) to get to the scenes I’d already seen. It really ruins the experience, for example if you know there’s a sequence in a film featuring a certain character later in the film, you know there’s no real danger for that character earlier in the movie. Or on a more basic level, if there’s a punchline or surprise in the promotional clip, you don’t experience that for the first time whilst watching the movie. Movie trailers are also guilty of ruining this sort of thing.

In an ideal world I’d love to go into a film completely fresh and not have seen anything in advance, however in today’s world it’ll likely never happen (nor do I have the will-power to not watch the latest movie trailers).

To try and minimise this, I do try to be a bit stricter with myself and I find that it makes the film experience much more enjoyable (as long as it’s a good film). I tend to watch trailers only a few times when they're first released and then never again, and especially not in the month leading up to release. Promotional clips themselves are a definite no go!

I proved this to myself recently, as I was super-hyped for Thor Ragnarok and I decided to watch the promotional clips. I still enjoyed the film, but I was definitely waiting for scenes and some of gags weren't as laugh out funny as I already know what to expect.

As a result I will not be watching the new Justice League movie clips! I want to be genuinely surprised when we see Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, The Flash, Aquaman and (of course) Superman unite for the first time!

Written by @RossBishop for MoviePush. Follow Ross on Twitter.