Johnny Depp’s manipulative Ebenezer trailer has me worried

Watching the first trailer for Johnny Depp’s latest movie, Ebenezer, I was immediately sold. 

Unfortunately, I was sold on films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Edward Scissorhands, and Alice in Wonderland rather than the film it was actually supposed to be promoting.

Before Johnny Depp appears for a single frame, Paramount reminds us exactly why we loved the now-controversial actor. ‘He brought us Captain Jack Sparrow,’ the trailer announces, before moving through Edward Scissorhands and The Mad Hatter like a greatest hits album. 

While those names flash across the screen, the camera glides through gloomy Victorian streets towards an unseen figure. Black birds scatter into the bruised sky as the music swells.

Only then did Depp appear, hidden beneath Ebenezer Scrooge’s towering top hat, smiling knowingly into the camera in a costume that nearly obscures his identity. 

‘It’s good to be back,’ he says, in a moment eerily (if unintentionally) reminiscent of the video Kevin Spacey released during his own attempt at a post-cancellation promotion.  

As it opens, strangers stop and stare at Depp’s character with a mixture of fascination and horror. 

And this isn’t a meta post-modernist film where Depp plays himself, this is a remake of one of the most adapted stories ever. 

While the movie is inevitably set in the 1800s, watching the trailer, it’s still difficult not to think of the years Depp spent at the centre of one of the biggest celebrity scandals in recent memory.

That scandal, his legal battle with Amber Heard, played out not just in court, but in the court of public opinion too. Metaphorically, we were all stopping to stare with a mixture of fascination and horror. 

It almost feels as though the trailer is trying to head off criticism by acknowledging the elephant in the room — the fact that nobody is watching this without bringing that baggage with them — before immediately ushering us somewhere much more comfortable: the past.

‘Remember?’ it seems to ask the audience, ‘Remember how much you loved that quirky, harmless pirate? Remember the first time you held hands with a girl while watching Edward Scissorhands in your parents’ basement? 

‘Remember how good this guy is at these kinds of characters?’

Of course, what it’s actually asking us to do is forget. Forget the scandal, suspend our disbelief, and enjoy Johnny Depp playing a Johnny Depp type.

And, despite feeling manipulated by the whole exercise, I have to admit it’s incredibly effective.

There’s a reason the trailer doesn’t open with Scrooge being tormented by ghosts or throwing snowballs at strangers. There’s a reason it doesn’t lead by foregrounding Ti West, despite him being one of the most distinctive filmmakers working in horror today. 

Instead, it leans almost entirely on Depp’s back catalogue, because that’s where the emotional connection already exists, because those characters don’t just belong to Johnny Depp; they belong to us.

That’s what makes it such a clever piece of marketing. It doesn’t try to persuade you that Depp deserves a comeback or attempt to litigate the past or tell you what to think about one of the most divisive celebrity stories in recent memory. 

Instead, it reaches for something far more powerful than persuasion: nostalgia.

That sensation is wonderfully disarming because it rarely announces itself as an argument and it doesn’t ask you to reconsider evidence or revisit headlines. 

It simply reminds you how you felt before those headlines even existed, and quietly questions why you shouldn’t feel that way again. 

There’s another layer that almost feels too neat to ignore. After years of public scrutiny, Depp’s first major Hollywood leading role comes in the form of perhaps literature’s most famous redemption story. 

Ebenezer Scrooge is a man haunted by his past, forced to confront how others see him before emerging transformed. 

Perhaps the most cynical reading of this trailer is to speculate that Depp and the movie-making machine surrounding him want us to lump together the actor’s possible wrongdoings with Scrooge’s, and forgive them all in one  festive night. 

None of this is to insist audiences shouldn’t watch Ebenezer, or that Depp shouldn’t be making films again, as that is a complicated question. 

People reached very different conclusions about the Heard trial, and they’re hardly going to change them because of a Christmas story we’ve seen countless versions of.

But regardless of your feelings on it all, this is a fascinating piece of marketing. Paramount clearly understands that the biggest obstacle facing Ebenezer is persuading audiences to reconnect with Johnny Depp, not Dickens’ famous parable. 

Much as I resent how transparent the trick feels, I can’t pretend it isn’t an exceptionally clever one. 

Whether it succeeds is another matter entirely. Nostalgia can do a remarkable amount of heavy lifting, but it doesn’t rewrite history.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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