You Were NOT Expecting This Honest 'TFIOS' Trailer

I love me some honest trailers. That Spider-Man trilogy one? Brilliant. Searing. The Star Wars : Attack Of the Clones one? Such greatness. So cutting. But I did not expect what we got from the new Fault In Our Stars honest trailer. I'm not complaining — it's great. It's just so... nice??

There's a lot you can jab at with The Fault In Our Stars based purely on its positioning: It's a cancer story, it's built in a way predetermined to milk your tears, it's part of the YA movie "trend," and its target audience is teenage girls, a group well-versed in having its media poked at just because of who it caters to. There's a lot of parody potential there. And so it's surprising to me how much this honest trailer so clearly doesn't dislike The Fault In Our Stars. It's their job to poke fun, and so they do, but there's a distinct lack of venom. In fact, there's something almost akin to respect? And there's definitely a lot of enjoyment. Since when do Honest Trailers lead into their roasting with the caveat that they're talking about "well-rounded characters?"

Once again, that's not a complaint: I'm a fan of honest trailers, and of The Fault In Our Stars, and of this honest trailer in particular. But it's interesting to note how the (in my opinion rather empty) accusations of melodrama and exploitative tears that have permeated parts of the Fault In Our Stars' discourse are notably absent from this particular examination of the movie. It's weirdly refreshing to witness a feature built on burns giving in to such unironic feeling.

Image: 20th Century Fox