As the summer of 1999 approached, it was all supposed to be about one film – The Phantom Menace.

At long last, some 16 years after Anakin joined Yoda and Obi-Wan in the glowing afterlife, we were going to find out how it all got started. We were teased with an awesome poster, showing young Jake Lloyd casting a Vader-shaped shadow and a TV spot that gave us Darth Maul opening up a double-ended light saber.

All of the anticipation was building for this one film, despite the fact that plenty of other hefty releases were lining up as well. Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy was due out, as was a science-fiction piece by the directors of well-regarded but relatively unseen indie effort, Bound. The Mummy wound up being a lot of fun and pretty successful too, though not  surprisingly so. It had a well known cast, Sommers had shown some promise in balancing CGI, action and laughs with his previous effort Deep Rising and the finished film wound up being exactly what it looked like from way in advance – a bit like Indiana Jones.

The real surprise, the real treat, wound up being that slightly off the radar science fiction effort, The Matrix.

The Matrix had certainly not appeared out of nowhere. It had been preceded by intelligent and subtle trailers and TV spots, showcasing the film’s style without giving away all of its secrets (surely that double-ended light saber would have had more impact had it been saved for the film itself?) and most importantly it had teased with the now well-known tag-line, “What is the Matrix?” It intrigued us and it interested us and most importantly it surprised us. As Empire stated quite rightly at the conclusion to their initial review, “You can bet your bottom dollar George never saw this phantom menace coming”.

The Matrix was blessed with an instantly distinctive style, a wealth of intelligent ideas, (albeit grafted in from Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity and pretty much every other philosophy or world-view you could think of), a leanness that the increasingly bloated sequels would struggle and fail to match and in bullet-time the coolest special effect to hit our screens since a T-1000 repaired its bullet holes. It was breath-taking stuff, endlessly entertaining and thought-provoking to a degree Lucas could not hope to compare. Even now (and I watched it again, for the umpteenth time, last night) it remains fresh, engaging and exciting, long after the initial wow-factor has worn off.

So why bring this up now? The Matrix was released *shudder* 12 years ago and there is unlikely to be much that is novel to be said about it now. The reason I am writing about it now is because of what it feels like it represents in this current age of media-saturation, a film that succeeded without deluging us with pre-release content, that made its mark through subtle, intelligent marketing rather than battering us into submission with fifty different teasers, trailers and TV spots. The current trend seems to be to give us the first five minutes of a film online (I’m looking at you, Source Code), or present us with an entire set-piece, in theory to whet our appetite, but in fact proving to be a fairly cynical effort to crow bar as many of us as possible into the cinema for that all important opening weekend, on which so much seems now to hang.

There is an article for this site up later containing two new TV spots for Thor, which seems to be a major culprit in this regard. Not that Thor looks like a bad film, far from it. It looks like a lot of fun, well-balanced and smartly directed. But it won’t be surprising. How can it be when across the assorted trailers and clips we’ve seen pretty much everything already? Perhaps I am wrong and Marvel & Branagh have left a few tricks up their sleeves, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Similar accusations can be leveled at Pirates of the Caribbean, Sucker Punch and X-Men: First Class and no doubt Green Lantern, Transformers, Captain America and Cowboys & Aliens will continue to ramp up their efforts over the coming weeks and months.

Very few film-makers and even fewer studios seem to be prepared to take a chance on under the radar success. Presumably the increasingly absurd production and then publicity budgets leave the studios feeling that they can’t run the risk of their films slipping out of our collective consciousness, forgetting in the process that if the film is good enough, it will be seen, it will be successful. Even JJ Abrams, so seemingly committed to teasing and secrecy when marketing his films, is having to concede to the tide. Despite the inventive and successful viral marketing for Cloverfield, he has had to (unwillingly?) agree to put more out there for Super 8, admitting that the volume of marketing being put out there for the films with which he is competing exposes his film to the risk of being passed by. In his own words:-

“I feel we need a little bit of a coming-out party because we are up against massive franchises and brands and most people don’t know what Super 8 means.”

Thankfully, the trailers and spots so far are preserving a little mystery, though it remains frustrating to see Abrams abandon his principles simply because everyone else is doing it and he’s afraid of missing the boat.

Ultimately, this is not a question of the quality of the films under consideration. The Matrix is unquestionably a better film than The Phantom Menace, but then so is pretty much any other film you might care to mention. The point here is that we are losing the opportunity to be surprised, to go to see a film without being able to check off every item on a long mental list of highlights already flagged up by a multitude of advance images and clips. Christopher Nolan showed us last summer than you can keep your cards close to your chest, show off a few money shots and then present your audience with something intelligent, rich in ideas and still containing a few unexpected delights. With Abrams now caving in to pressure (from above?), we seem to be running out of people brave enough to do the same.

I could of course shut my eyes and ears to all of this background noise and make my own choice about how much I already know before going in to a film, though that is a tricky task when writing for a film blog. But I shouldn’t need to. Someone somewhere can surely make the choice to exercise some restraint and demonstrate some subtlety in the interests of preserving some of the mystery, anticipation and surprise that used to be and hopefully can continue to be so precious and important a part of the film-going experience.

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Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.