I have a secret dream to be a movie trailer editor. I guess that’s now no longer a secret. I love a good movie trailer. I often love a movie’s trailer more than I end up loving the movie. That’s probably not that different than a lot of people. It’s usually the end of the trailer that I really dig, especially for action, sci-fi, or mystery/horror films because the crescendo moment in the trailer hits at the very end rather than the three-quarter mark.
In dramatic structure this moment comes in Act III, followed by Act IV and Act V, containing, respectively, the falling action, and then either the resolution or catastrophe. This climax moment is rarely found at the end of film, and when it is it’s usually very special. Think Usual Suspects or the more recent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. So it is for this reason I love trailers. Because the trailer provides this sense of mystery and awe, and leaves you wanting more in a way is really only viable in this short medium or through the small screen in a serialized drama like Lost.
So that’s a stupidly long explanation for why I was sitting around watching a bunch of trailers the other day. Normal people probably would have just said, “I was watching trailers to see what movies were coming out.” Or maybe normal people don’t feel the need to rationalize and explain their actions. Whatever…
Anyway, I see this trailer for an upcoming “comedy” called Friends with Kids which unbeknownst to the writers is actually a tragedy or possibly a story of redemption that then turns into a “happily ever after…” film. I don’t know, because it’s not out yet. But randomly days after I had seen this trailer it was the beginning of this particular trailer that apparently made its mark on me rather than the end.
The scene can be painted rather easily. The camera is tracking four individuals sitting at a table at a white table cloth, fine dining restaurant. Camera left is a man and woman we come to find have been married for some period, and camera right we find a man and woman that are longtime friends. On the far side of the table at camera center are two empty chairs representing a missing pair whom those present at the table indicate they are waiting on.
Suddenly the missing occupants of the chairs arrive at the table a little flustered trying to make excuses for their 20 minute absence ”to the bathroom”. The comments from the two pair that had been waiting quickly follow implying that the apparent newly weds snuck off to have sex.
I found this profoundly ironic. The nature of the tongue in cheek phrase “newly weds…” is a “wink, wink” conversational jest to reference the sexual passion, love, giddiness, and excitement found after marriage for whatever period of time (hopefully till you die, fingers crossed). This can almost only stem from a Christian perspective on purity or at minimum even a social standard (likely influenced through Christianity) prior the the last several decades of sexual explosion forced on the public through Hollywood (I also blame hippies and Canada).
The very impetus for such remarks and attitudes toward sex between newly weds comes from a social and/or spiritual standard of purity prior to wedlock. It’s an understanding that the two have waited for sex and now that the wait is over, the pair can’t keep their hands off of each other. It would be stupid to assume that every couple that has sex before marriage doesn’t have equally as good sex or better after marriage. But the excitement that is in the waiting for that thing can’t be present. That’s impossible, because that thing has already been had.
I simply can’t watch this trailer and think that two characters whom the writer has created to live in a world where sex in a casual dating relationship (or with even less commitment than that if you watch the trailer all the way through) would be thicker in the throes of passion after their marriage than prior. Why wouldn’t this occur during the dating segment and then after the marriage it’s par for the course and already a part of the relationship dynamic?
It’s simply humorous to me to see the misuse of the dialog in this scene when it is apparent the understanding of that thing no longer is the secular social norm. I’m also not recommending this film in this post. It looks terrible and the actors are buffoons. Several of them from the worst cast of Saturday Night Live in 30 years.
If you’d like to hear a no bull presentation of what purity is and what sex was designed to be by the Creator, I’d invite you to listen to my friend Miles Welch’s series’ “Marriage Material,” “Sexology,” or “Dating in Real Life”. You can find them here. Miles doesn’t like to throw any punches and he considers himself to be a funny guy. So you’ll probably laugh a few times. In all seriousness some of the best series’ I’ve ever heard and helps develop ones mindset to expose flawed thinking that exists in films like the one discussed above.
