I can make a case for almost any movie that the trailer intentionally mislead audiences about what content was within. Besides, what if I consider coffee drug use and, because the movie doesn't have a drug use label, isn't shown in the trailer, and reviewers didn't mention it that I was mislead.
The whole point of previewing a movie is seeing the entire thing because no one but the parents can decide if content is suitable for their kids.
I’m thinking of the trailer more for general tone and somewhat the opposite use you’re thinking of - if any of the trailers (movies generally end up with 2 or 3) shows someone‘s head being blown off, that’s a fairly good indication that that
is in the movie (while, obviously, it’s omission from the trailer isn’t a guarantee that it
isn’t in the movie).
From my limited experience (I don’t have kids, I do have nieces),
commonsensemedia.org is pretty decent about citing specifics of what a movie contains in various categories, for things a parent might not want kids to see (I found them because IMDb links to them for their child appropriateness information). If the kids see coffee use and you didn’t want them to, then it’s time to sit down and have a discussion with them about what they’ve seen.
But you’re presenting it like the parents watching the movie in the theater without the kids, for $10, is the ideal situation (still don’t know where this theater is that shows first-run movies for $5/per ticket for adults). But that’s
not ideal, it’s a compromise too - you’re gambling $10 to see if the movie is appropriate for
your kids. $30 and previewing it at home is just a
different gamble. The
ideal would be previewing it for free. There‘s no good way to do that in any case, for a first run movie. If you move away from first-run, you could wait a year, let your local library buy a disc, borrow that disc for free, and have the parents watch it, and then optionally show it to the kids. All for free, and the only thing you lose is instant access.
(The movie industry is all based on tiers of access, where you pay more for access sooner, and they collect a ton of money that first weekend, and in the ensuing weeks, and then they have a long series of tiers to sell to people with different tradeoffs of how much it costs and how long you have to wait - it’s the same in all sorts of industries: buying last year’s model of something a year after it released is generally cheaper than buying this year’s model right when it releases - you’re still getting the same thing you would’ve a year ago, but it’s now cheaper because it isn’t brand new).
So, in this release system (as it pertains to parents previewing movies) I’m seeing a system that was already compromised now offering a different compromise. And they’re not doing it because they want to - if it weren’t for the pandemic, they’d much rather have millions of people in the theaters opening weekend. They’re looking for a way to accommodate the pandemic, that doesn’t involve them going bankrupt, and doesn’t burn bridges with the theater chains.
My point is, any one of these ways, you’re taking a gamble - in your $10 path, you’re gambling $10 to see if the movie is appropriate - it’s just that the options available have had to change due to circumstances beyond the industry’s control.
Personally, the tickets I was buying last year were approaching $20 already ($17 or $18 or so) for my favorite theater. $30 is more, but it’s not
orders of magnitude more, especially for something I’m not doing very often. I likely won’t be buying in on Mulan, because the movie doesn’t strike my fancy (not a big fan of remakes), but there’s a handful of other movies that have been waylaid by the pandemic (like Black Widow) that I would absolutely jump at the chance of paying $30 to see day-of, while staying safely at home. I miss seeing movies on the (really) big screen. If this is the best we can do for now, so be it. (And I still laugh at the people outraged because it costs more than one movie theater ticket - they seem not very good at math, thinking the studios would offer it for less than at least the price of 2-3 tickets, since they have no control over how many are watching in your living room.)
