The first full trailer for "Meridian," the sci-fi thriller starring Zendaya and directed by Denis Villeneuve, dropped Tuesday morning and immediately split the internet into two camps.
Within four hours, the clip racked up over 40 million views across platforms, but the comment sections tell a messier story than the view count suggests.
Fans who loved it are calling it the most visually stunning two minutes of the year.
The trailer opens on a flooded Los Angeles, with Zendaya's character navigating a city that looks like it drowned and never dried out.
Villeneuve's signature slow-burn imagery is everywhere — fog, mirrors, long silent shots of water.
The backlash is coming from a different corner.
A vocal group of book readers says the trailer spoils a twist that doesn't arrive until page 400 of the source novel. "They just showed the ending," one viral post read, gathering over 200,000 likes before lunch.
Zendaya hasn't addressed the controversy directly, but she posted a single emoji on her Instagram story — a wave — which fans are interpreting in about fifteen different ways.
Some think it's a nod to the flooding imagery.
Others think it's her way of saying "wait for it." The timing is interesting.
The trailer arrives the same week a rival studio pushed back its own tentpole release by six months.
Insiders say the calendar just got a lot friendlier for "Meridian," which now has a clear runway into next summer.
What's really driving the conversation is the casting.
Tom Holland appears for exactly one second, and you'd think the internet had never seen a cameo before.
Clips of that single frame are circulating on their own, slowed down, zoomed in, and dissected frame by frame.
Not everyone is sold on the movie itself.
Some viewers say the trailer leans too hard on mood and not enough on plot, a complaint that followed Villeneuve's last two films right up until they made a billion dollars.
If history is any guide, the skeptics will show up opening weekend anyway.
Studios have gotten aggressive about trailers lately, front-loading them with spectacle to win the algorithm. "Meridian" is playing that game well, but it's also betting that audiences will tolerate a little mystery.
That's a gamble in an era when every plot point leaks before release.
The real test comes in the next few weeks, when ticket presales open and the discourse shifts from "did they spoil it" to "is it actually good." Until then, the argument itself is doing the marketing for free. **Our take:** Trailer outrage has become its own genre, and most of it evaporates by opening night.
If the movie delivers, nobody will remember what the teaser ruined.
Final Thoughts
If it doesn't, the spoiler debate will be the least of its problems.