User blog comment:Akin.toussaint/Trailers.Did they do more harm then good?/@comment-7472785-20131013091111/@comment-108.248.176.172-20131014200224

With respect, your argument is a bit of non-sequitor, seeing as the traditional trailers you reference as composed of "hilights" are put together from non-sequential segments of the work actually being promoted. The RWBY trailers are different in that they represent no such footage but rather are there own little self-contained scenes, which run in their entirety and (as best we know so far) will not be integrated into the show itself. They are really more like small promotional vignettes of the viral variety (not unlike what we've seen with Halo's "Foreward Unto Dawn" web series, or any number of other similar promotional efforts made for movies, shows and games in the last couple of years.   So there's a lot more potential for the trailers to deviate in town from the series itself without this being solely the result of editing (which is often the case when people feel a movie trailer overhyped the film itself).

With that for context, yes, I am certainly one of those who feels a little disappointed by the change in tone. Not everyone goes fanboy scavenging for every bit of pre-release information they can get for every series they anticipate and if the production staff telegraphed the radical change in focus that we've ultimately received, I missed it. I certainly expected that with Mr. Oum at the helm of this one, that he would play to his known strengths. All of that being said,  we're hardly entitled to impose our artistic vision over his and it's not like we're being cheated -- it's a free series and Monty's trademark (and frankly genius) action choreography is still present, if mired in the middle of truly sacharine teen melodrama. Those action scenes take a lot of time to generate, involving voluminous effort on the part of both the mo-cap and animation teams, which seem to be relatively small, so it's understandable that they are padded with the content that is less time-consuming for Monty directly. Yes, it's unfortunate that there's less action on average than in the seasons of RvB that Monty was most highly involved with, but this series involves a lot more visual polish, so that too is probably unavoidable.

As to the OP's original question, frankly I think it's nonsensical; the current populairty of the show was clearly in large part generated by the trailers and any sense of disappointment they might have caused is found alrgely amongst those who would not have been aware of the series otherwise, so no, cearly they were not a mistake. I think we need to remember also, that this series is clearly targetted at a certain fanbase -- not to put too fine a point on it, but the show is clearly going to go over best with  fans of anime and of certain genres of games, and fans of both mediums have a pretty high level of tolerance for (or even propensity to embrace) cheesiness and/or cliched melodrama.

For myself,  I'm more than willing to wait out the slower-paced bits in anticipation of the next big brawl. Yes, the story is mostly comprised of very clumsy coming-of-age dramatics, and I have to admit that a feeling of deep dissapointment dsecends upon me about 3/4 of the way through almost every episode when I realize nothing eventful is going to happen, but there are moments of genuine emotional resonance and some truly funny stuff (mostly linked to Oum's afore-mentioned animating brilliance -- Jaune tumbling end-over-end during the "landing strategy" bit, as if he had the center of gravity and rigidity of a figurine, while his compatriats all turn into organically fluid blurs, or Weiss shaking more and more violently in supressed anger watching Ruby goof about -- I must have watched each of those six-second segments thirty times each, unable to stop laughing).

Personally, if I'm a little disappointed in the drama so far, I want to give Monty a chance because even if I've failed to connect 100% with this story, I really do think he is a master story-teller in the making; even going back Dead Fantasy and before, I think he really understands how to put emotion into his work -- what he did with that series with virtually no dialogue is pretty amazing and it's clear he knows how to edit visual and auditory elements together for tension and emotion. It's just that he's currently experimenting outside his previously minimalist approach. Give him some time, and give the characters themselves a chance to grow, and I think we'll all end up loving this series exactly as much as we expected to from the trailers.

I hope anyway...apparently the show is now catching on with girls about the age Ruby apparently is and if the producers decide to cater to that audience, all bets are off. I remember reading in an interview very early into the series run that they were very happy with how they had represented women in the show, even though the writing and main creative direction at the time was almost entirely male and I thought "In what world, do women talk like this?" And then more recently I learned of some of the demographics of RWBY's success and thought "Ahhh, ok, you don't mean women, you mean moody, self-conscious teen girls -- yeah, that makes sense." Though honestly, some of the characters and dialogue are still so cliched and stilted that I'm surprised they ring true even for younger audiences. Some here have implied that the series is disjointed or incosistent; I personally don't see that at all; if anyhting I find it highly predictable. Does anyone here doubt that improbably dickish, 80's movie villains team CRDL are going to be antagonists right up until the moment that Jaune risks his own safety to save Cardin from a surprise attack (possibly in this week's upcoming episode), earning their begruding respect, but that the group will remain a sort of antihero element in the story, until some point that they are called upon to enter the fray against a truly evil nemesis, thus redeeming their role in the narrative? Come on, can it possibly go down any other way in this particular story, except possibly that they could at some point "go to the dark side"? Look, there's a reason this show was all but made for TVTropes.org; everyhting is just a little too convenient for the sake of a plot that relies heavily on established themes; observe that all the guys who have a common theme in their outfits and a bad disposition that contrasts with the purer motives of our heroines all end up on team JERK (yes, I'm renaming them) together. High-school bully style characters don't really make sense in this setting (surely if Beacon's role is so important to protecting lives and their training to get into it so intensive, this kind of juvenille behaviour would not get them very far) but they are present because the story is less about realistic world building at this point than it is about setting up the protagonists to face the kinds of problems the target audience can relate to.

But as per my observations above concerning storytelling abilities of the primary creative director, I have faith that they will strike a better balance as the series continues. If not, will I still watch every second in anticipation of that brilliant action-move amalgamation that is Monty Oum's wheelhouse? Yeah, almost certainly......