Andrew Klavan recently ran an episode where he sat down to watch old movie trailers followed by their modern remakes, judging which approach actually served the story and the audience. He walked listeners through a handful of examples and made the blunt case that something important has been lost when Hollywood swaps craft for spectacle.
The premise was simple and relatable: play the original trailer, play the remake trailer, then call out which one actually convinced you to care about the film. It’s the kind of no-nonsense media criticism hardworking Americans need right now — a clear-eyed comparison that exposes how studios have shifted priorities over the decades.
Klavan’s point lands because it matches what many conservatives already feel: Hollywood churns remakes for safe profit and cultural signaling, not to make something better. The creative rot isn’t just a theory; veteran observers have been documenting a steady drain of originality in films and trailers for years, a trend Klavan skewers with equal parts humor and disgust.
Beyond politics, there’s a technical change that matters: trailers themselves have mutated. Where once a trailer told a coherent story and let you judge by implication, today’s teasers often pummel viewers with hyper-editing, faux-emotion, and manufactured hype — and the newest danger is the flood of AI-generated or fake trailers that blur truth and fiction. That degradation is a cultural problem because it trains audiences to be manipulated rather than moved.
Watching Klavan put originals next to remakes was a reminder of why nostalgia matters: not because everything old is automatically better, but because older filmmakers respected pace, character, and a viewer’s intelligence. Modern trailers, by contrast, too often treat audiences like market segments to be mined, using psychological tricks instead of persuasion rooted in quality.
If conservatives want to reclaim culture, the answer isn’t whining — it’s voting with our wallets, praising and promoting genuine storytellers, and refusing to normalize the lazy remake treadmill. When audiences support projects that take risks and honor craftsmanship, studios wake up. Klavan’s episode was a salute to that kind of stubborn, old-fashioned toughness that built our best films.
At the end of the day this is about honesty: honest storytelling, honest marketing, and honest respect for the public. Andrew Klavan’s trailer experiment is a small thing, but it’s the kind of cultural pushback we need — a clear reminder that Americans deserve better than hollow spectacle dressed up as art.
