Movie trailers are a test of patience

My wife hates movie trailers. Or at least most of them.

When we go to the theater, she looks at the listed start time, then adds 20 minutes. Getting to the theater on time is useless, she says, because you’re just going to sit through trailers and ridiculous commercials.

Sitting through 20 minutes of trailers — yes, I timed it — simply infuriates her. She has a point.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there were about three trailers prior to a feature film. And there never were commercials. Actually, no commercials was one of the draws of going to the theater. It was a break from being pounded with Buy This Now or Your Life Will Be Meaningless ads.

For my part, I don’t have much of a problem with trailers, although limiting the pre- feature block to about 10 minutes or less would be a good idea. After that, eyes tend to glaze over or people get up and go to the bathroom.

Besides, a good chunk of people watch trailers online anyway. Getting another dose at the theater is overkill.

Still, some trailers are worth watching twice. The one for the upcoming remake of Stephen King’s “It” is two minutes and 30 seconds of true creepiness. Though I hated the movie, the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s take on King’s “The Shining” in 1980 is fabulous.

Director Luc Besson’s newest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” has a trailer so full of eye candy that you need to watch it several times to catch it all. Judging from Shawn Ryan the trailer, I’m not sure there’s a scene in the film that isn’t CGI. I have no idea what the film is about, but the trailer intrigues me.

While its trailer is full of nifty special effects, is anyone truly excited about “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”? Holy cow, there have been five of these things already. Maybe it should be: “Dead Men Ought Not to Come Back Again to Tell Tales.”

Then there are trailers that provide hearty laughs — even if they’re unintentional. “Fast and Furious 8: The Fate of the Furious” has the most ludicrous trailer I’ve ever seen. Not that the “Fast and Furious” franchise is based on any sense of reality, but diverting a torpedo that’s speeding over a sheet of Arctic ice is gut-bustingly hilarious.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” certainly was not aimed at me, but I still can’t help but laugh at its oh- so- serious trailer. Trying to make the plot seem like an epic-for-the-ages tale of romantic love and longing, the trailer was overwrought to the point of pain.

But hey, maybe that was the point.