Nothing can go wrong with a trailer if it is action-packed, about a dystopian world and contains children opposing evil adults trying to do their jobs. After all, hardly anything is more entertaining than watching broken and scared adolescents fighting in harsh environments while inspiring music blares in the background. At least, that is what “The Darkest Minds” trailer seems to be portraying.

Initially, the premise, a group of teenagers with magical powers who learn to harness their abilities and defeat the government, seems interesting. However, if one were to sit down and mull over the idea, it does not make any sense. Adults are in power, because they generally have more wisdom and knowledge. Taking children from their parents may be wrong, but it would seem to be the best option in the moment. It appears the government is fearful of those with newfound abilities and rightly so. A 5-year-old with fire powers is generally not the best idea. It would be considered especially bad if their parents did not understand how to handle them, which is assumed, because this is the first time an incident has happened, according to the trailer.

Information provided by “The Darkest Minds” trailer brings up a second problem with the clips. Although the video contains narration to showcase what the film will be about, it generally tells no story whatsoever. All the story seems to cover is children gaining powers and the government taking them, because the adults are afraid of those with the newfound abilities. The problem is that simply nothing else significant happens. The entire rest of the trailer is music, action clips full of explosions, running and a moment where the protagonist seems to be fading for no justified reason.

The scene with the main character disappearing into mist completely characterizes what the trailer is doing with its story. Nothing. Trailers are created to get a viewer’s attention and explain the story, but the evaporation of a human being does not seem explainable or reasonable in any form. In fact, this portion of the clip seems to be something a director would put at the end of a film as a character dies, but instead it’s placed in a trailer with absolutely no context.

With the little amount of plot viewers see from the trailer, the audience also gets the story’s setting and time period. The small amount of time spent with narration shows scenes of a dystopian future, which is not original especially after the release of all the other recent dystopian drama movies. Teenagers in a ruined future seems to be a running theme and may be a excellent way to get box office money, but an original idea would have a much better chance of gaining a large number of supporters. Instead, bland stories are chosen to gain initial money and thrown away to move on the next big trend.

Along the lines of unoriginal ideas, producers and directors seem to prefer a movie that uses teenagers as their main characters. The problem with this type of film, especially in the case of “The Darkest Minds,” is how the trailers seem to force themselves to gain a young audience. Everything about “The Darkest Minds” trailer appears to be targeted toward adolescents displaying children overthrowing the government, but this attempt to gain attention from the trailer is too much.

“The Darkest Minds” trailer is almost annoying with how much it tries to praise the younger audience, and in doing so it not only alienates its older audience but creates sense of dread for the movie itself. If the trailer is forcing itself to be interesting to adolescents, a large number of unwanted teenage stereotypes have a high likelihood of making appearances during the film.

The trailer mentions the children in the United States surviving something, with no context as to what it is, leaving only a small portion of the adolescent population remaining. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) plot summary, 98 percent of the younger citizens died because of a disease. However at the end of 2017, the population of children reached 73.8 million meaning the number would drop down to around 1.5 million.

Even with the massive decrease in population, the number of children left is still high enough to make the idea of having super powers obsolete. Eventually, the adults would learn to accept the fact their children can move items with their minds. This reason is why movies tend to only show a handful of people with amazing abilities, meaning the powers they have obtained are extraordinary and unique. Some of the best story plots come from characters’ struggles with accepting themselves and their ability, but it is a struggle, because they are different and have to learn being different is all right. “The Darkest Minds” trailer, however, specifically says the main character is “very rare,” but it would not really matter how rare a person is if the person has powers just like everybody else.

“The Darkest Minds” trailer is obnoxious, because it tries too hard to create a world unable to work. The parents of 1.5 million children would not give them up especially after the teenagers almost died because of disease. The adults are unlikely to allow the government to contain their children in a facility which, on the trailer, looks worse than what a parent would ever want their child in. 

Because of its unrealistic and empty plot line along with the overuse of action shots, boring and ridiculous premise and portrayal to the teenage audience in a stereotypical way, “The Darkest Minds” trailer fails to capture the attention of those who would be interested in this type of story playing out. Overall, the thought of seeing the movie is unreasonable because of the trailer’s terrible attempts to capture an audience.