IT’S NOT NEWS to report that trailers are often better than the movies they advertise. Some of the best trailers in recent years–“The Phantom Menace,” “Mission: Impossible 2,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Eyes Wide Shut”–have been for movies which can only be charitably considered middling. Are movies getting worse, or are trailers getting better? Probably a little of both. No need to repeat the state-of-the-industry lament here, but it is worth considering whether the art of trailer-making is now entering its golden age. (If you think making a trailer isn’t art, how would you have sold “Entrapment”?)

With “Kill Bill”–the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino, in case you were wondering–the problem isn’t that the trailer is better than the movie (although it is), it’s that the trailer is required reading for the movie: In 28 seconds it gives you more explanation about the story than the movie does in 93 minutes. The plot and exposition in “Kill Bill” is sketched in such short, hurried strokes that audiences who haven’t seen the trailer might not entirely understand what they’re seeing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is different. Who knows, perhaps trailer-as-prologue is the next evolution of the form. (Click here to watch the excellent trailer.)