Furious fan backlash after Netflix trailer 'spoils' new Millie Bobby Brown film Damsel

Netflix has just released the trailer for their new Millie Bobby Brown movie Damsel, and while many fans responded positively, there was one thing that upset them.

Initially, the film appears to be a classic damsel in distress movie, with Brown playing Princess Elodie, the soon-to-be distressed damsel, and Nick Robinson playing Prince Henry. Princess Elodie agrees to marry Prince Henry but, to her misfortune, discovers it was all a trap. She is thrown into a cave to face a fire-breathing dragon and fight for her survival.

Unfortunately, many of those who watched the trailer felt it gave far too much away, which seems to be something of a trend with modern-day trailers.

On X, formerly Twitter.com, fans were quick to voice their frustration and some even messaged Netflix directly.

@Veefergie said “I’m going to watch this, but I feel like I already did by watching the trailer. Anyways I’m looking forward to Damsel kicking some butt.”

@thepiedmontster wrote “@netflix you guys need to change up your trailer department. They seem to think a trailer is supposed to be a condensed version of the film, just saw the Damsel trailer, and it seems like they gave a loooooooooooooot in it. Feels like I don’t need to see it now.”

The irritation didn’t stop there. Over on YouTube, there were even more complaints about how much the action-packed trailer gave away.

@splurg519 said, “This trailer pretty much showed the entire movie. Milly kills or befriends the dragon, ends the pattern of brides being sacrificed, and kills all the bad people in the kingdom.”

While @earsIIhear said, “Damn that was a great movie. Glad they condensed it to a few minutes for us.”

This isn’t a new complaint from movie fans, as many trailers are often accused of giving too much away. In October 2023, Buzzfeed ran a list of 23 trailers that spoil major plot twists, and it includes some pretty big hitters. Among the most upsetting were The Truman Show trailer, which shows Jim Carrey’s character leaving the set of his fake life, and the Terminator 2 trailer, which shows the ‘killer robot’ is there to protect rather than destroy civilisation.

Both of these things might have been best preserved as secret plot twists rather than being given away before the viewer even sees the movie…

So why do trailers choose to give away so much these days?

According to Drew Cummins, who makes film trailers for a living, giving things away in trailers is never done by accident.

He told Marketplace in 2019 that the process “..can go on for months like one trailer can have 50 versions, and that’s just one of the many that were cut”

And David Singh, a movie marketing exec from Solstice Studios said “It’s such a competitive world out there. You’re competing for people’s time with, you know, every platform imaginable. You’ve got to tell them enough to get them excited about it,”

Although people might complain about spoilers in trailers, they will likely still go and see the film. And who’s to know what else happens to Princess Elodie in Damsel? Until we see the film, no one can determine just how much of the film has been given away in the trailer.