Money and Pennies for Skyfall

Skyfall was great. Anyway, enough about the film. I want to talk about the utter arse gravy that was the THIRTEEN minutes of advertising preceding it. I do not mean […]

skyfall

Skyfall was great.

Anyway, enough about the film.

I want to talk about the utter arse gravy that was the THIRTEEN minutes of advertising preceding it.

I do not mean the series of trailers – we expect and often enjoy these. Trailers have long been a part of the cinema experience – a chance to really get an idea of what the next box office hits will look like on the big screen.

(Les Miserables looks like it has the potential to be a cracker – Amanda Seyfried really has come a long way since her days as Karen in Mean Girls: “If you’re from Africa, then why are you white?” Hoping in vain for more of the same Amanda).

No, it wasn’t the 10 minutes of trailers that annoyed me.

I didn’t even mind the Twilight’s makers’ admirable but persistently unsuccessful attempts to endow Kristen Stewart with something resembling a soul.

What annoyed me was the fact that even before the trailers had started, 13 minutes after Skyfall’s showing time, not a single movie related image had been shown.

Instead I was bombarded with a series of ridiculously sexy and ridiculously rich Americans, advertising ridiculously expensive bollocks that only ridiculously deluded people buy. Ridiculous.

 

I’m not going to say advertising is wrong. It is unavoidable, indeed necessary, in today’s society – I cannot but expect to be targeted with advertising when I watch a music video on Youtube for free for example, or when I buy a cheap, high quality newspaper.

What I do not expect, and will not accept, is a series of advertisements eating into time I have essentially paid for.

Time has value, and to force advertising upon paying cinema goers after the published showing hour is to steal our time, with nothing in return.

This essentially is the equivalent to piracy. They call it ‘smart marketing’ – shall we call piracy ‘smart shopping’?

As a strictly law abiding citizen I of course do not condone movie piracy.

But if that nob, the one who tries to convince me that if I buy Giorgio Armani aftershave I’ll look like him, doesn’t bugger off, I may be popping ‘letmewatchthis.ch’ into Google in the very near future.

I’ve heard that’s where one goes.