The 2018 "Lone Ranger Rule" Report

I'm insane. I think we've established this by now. I track all sorts of stupid stuff. For several years, I tracked my favorite MPAA ratings. I reported back on the status of my DVR. The poorly named "Club 50" has been a major part of what I do. I spend hundred of hours a year tracking college basketball information for blog posts a year. I spent dozens of hours translating the Venice Film Festival for a theoretical project that I'm not even sure I'll do. Then there's all the things that I don't even track for this blog. I'm a thorough and obsessive individual who will commit to long term project despite having almost nothing to gain for it.

With that understanding, welcome to my Lone Ranger Rule Report. For a long time - since 2013, to be exact - I've had something that I call "The Lone Ranger Rule". Obviously, this is came about after Disney laid siege on theaters for months trying to convince people to see their obviously doomed Johnny Depp film. The of The Lone Ranger Rule is that there are some movies that have beat me down so much with their advertising, that I have to see them, regardless of my excitement for them, to justify the time spent watching the trailer before other movies. Strong candidates in the past have been The Lone Ranger, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Shape of Water, and several other movies I've since forgotten. Previously, I roughly set the parameters as "if I've seen the trailer enough times to equal the run time of a feature film, then the Long Range Rule applies". I never liked that definition. It felt inaccurate.

So, I decided to do something about it. Starting in January, for every movie I've seen over the last year, I've logged which trailers played before them. Of course, I moved that information to a spreadsheet. I've tallied it all up, and here's what I found.

#1) Mission : Impossible - Fallout

Trailer Count: 13 times (I saw a trailer for this before 13 movies I saw in 2018)

#2) Mary Poppins Returns

Trailer Count: 10 times

#3) First Man

Trailer Count: 9 times

#4) Isle of Dogs, Mortal Engines, Papillon, The Mule

Trailer Count: 8 times

#5) Alita: Battle Angel, Bad Times at the El Royale, Beautiful Boy, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Vice

Trailer Count: 7 times

I saw all but two of those movies. Alita: Battle Angel won't be released until February 2019, so its numbers will probably grow. It has both been aggressively  advertised throughout the year and been delayed at least once. I would be very surprised if I don't get around to seeing it. The big exception is that I didn't see Papillon. I really don't know how that trailer found me so much. That is a massive outlier.

I would also like to note one misleading number. I saw the Isle of Dogs trailer far more than 8 times. It was a staple throughout the Fall of 2017. There was only a single trailer for it, and I'm certain that it popped up more than Mission: Impossible - Fallout. So you can put an asterisk next to that first place thanks to an incomplete data set.

Based on the results, I'm now expanding the definition for The Lone Ranger Rule:

The Hard Lone Ranger Rule: 9 times. If the trailer count hits 9, I've been sufficiently worn down and will see a movie, no questions asked.

The Soft Long Ranger Rule: 4 times. In 2018, I saw the trailer for 41 movies 4 times or more. 10 of them haven't been released yet. Only 1 of the other 31 I didn't see (again, Papillon).  A 96.8% hit rate is enough for me so set a rule. A rule of thumb at the very least.

I'll be the first to own up to the pointlessness of this study of mine. Frankly, I'm not sure why you'd even bother to read this. I found it interesting though, and as I've said before, a significant amount of why I keep up with this blog is to justify my own obsessions. 

OK, here's the lesson I learned from this that can be applied to other people. If you thought you saw the Mission: Impossible - Fallout trailers a lot this year, I can confirm absolutely that you weren't alone. Paramount pushed that harder than any movie this year by a healthy margin.