In this day and age, marketing a film digitally and physically is integral to its success. Just as ye olde Hollywood had big names to advertise films, we in the present day have the likes of commercials, corporate tie-ins, ads, posters, and what-have-you in order to promote our films. Perhaps the most well-known promotion type--the one I and many others pay most attention to--is the trailer. Especially thanks to the power of the internet, the movie trailer has become the premier method of marketing a film.

It’s also the most unwieldy.

We’ve all seen that kind of trailer: the one that, in the span of just one to three minutes, either gives to you huge chunks of a film’s story or reveals the best bits of the film before you get to see it for yourself in theaters.

Of course, there are many elements that cannot be judged by a trailer, such as music, art direction, costume design, and so forth, but most moviegoers pay money for tickets so that they can experience some kind of cinematic story, conventional or not. Many trailers today ruin that experience, either due to dropping too many hints about plot, outright spoilers, or showing special moments that would have been a welcome surprise during a first viewing.

There’s nothing more magical than embracing a movie’s world for the first time, unspoiled and completely unaware of what’s going to happen. Why, then, do many trailers feel the need to show or make implications about that big, climactic action sequence, best joke, cool set-piece, or third-act fodder that we aren’t supposed to see until we get into the theater?

This all goes back to what I said about marketing. For the movie studios of today, marketing means a lot, especially to the big-budget, non-indie films. A good marketing strategy is half the battle when it comes to drawing in box office profits, as a film with little exposure or audience interest has little chance of making investors and studios happy from a financial standpoint.

So in that regard, I kind of understand why a trailer would show a lot--marketers do have to sell the film at hand to make it stand out with audiences--but at the same time, I have to address my concerns with the way most trailers are structured nowadays.

Let me give you an example of a movie trailer that’s guilty of showing too much. Disney’s “Zootopia” had a trailer showcasing a scene involving the two main characters visiting a DMV run entirely by sloths. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed at the trailer and loved it; I thought the comedic timing and sight gags were great.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was supposed to see this for myself. The joke is brilliant, far too brilliant to be shown in its entirety on the internet. This trailer doesn’t use the whole scene, but it uses just enough--enough to make the full scene rather unsurprising and less funny when watching the actual film. Again, if most people go to the movies to be entertained by a story and content of a film, wouldn’t a trailer like this one defeat or at least diminish the purpose of paying money for a movie ticket?

Now, you could say, “Well, just don’t watch the trailers, then,” but I find that to be a copout and not a solution. In fact, all that does is tell studios that they’re doing the right thing with trailers--which in many cases is untrue.

Think about it this way: does a magician ever reveal or even drop hints about what he does for his act? No, of course not. The best movie trailers understand this as well, knowing that mystique interests people a lot more than explanation. In other words? Good trailers tell very little, if not nothing at all.

So let’s look at this in action: the first official trailer for 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” The trailer has all the makings of good film marketing: quick editing, lines of dialogue taken out of context and not attributed to specific characters, an emphasis on visuals, stuff that generates interest but doesn’t simply spill the beans.

It generates commentary, speculation, an eagerness and yearning for more--it generates hype. And isn’t that what the studios want for their advertisements? Isn’t that how studios want to get butts into seats?

Trailers should get you pumped up for a film, not basically tell you, “This is a story about X who does Y.” If studios realize this sooner rather than later, it’s only going to benefit them in the end. I know that the internet-happy and social media-obsessed society of today yearns for the details, but sometimes it’s okay to be left in the dark regarding a movie. It makes you think more. And when it comes to film, few things are better than getting to say you never saw it coming.