United 93 Trailer

Over the last few weeks, NPH has watched with interest the trailer for United 93. It's not a film I plan on going to see, but I find the publicity campaign very interesting. If you haven't seen it, the trailer features clips from the film interspersed with interview clips of the director. What he's doing is defending the making of the film. It's a publicity campaign that is anticipating the number one objection people will have to the film--it's not the right time--and firing a preemptive volley ahead of time.

What I find a little disconcerting is that, in order to justify (and therefore promote) the film, the trailers wax patriotic about the heroism of the United 93's passengers, people whose heroism has never been questioned by anyone. It's like the campaign is seeking to identify the film entirely with the memory of United 93's passengers as a way to sell the merits of the film. In other words, if you don't like the movie you don't think those passengers were heroes.

And this is precisely why I think now is not the right time for a film like this. The effort that the film studio is putting into arguing the appropriateness of the timing is signal enough that something's not quite right.