Misleading movie trailers

[Dom Cruise]

I'd like to talk about a phenomenon where trailers/advertisements for movies give you a false idea of what the actual movie is like.

The first time I noticed this was the ad campaign for the Robin Williams movie Bicentennial Man.

Ads like that made you think the movie was more of wacky comedy ala Mrs Doubtfire instead of the drama with comedy elements it actually was, I remember when I saw the movie on video being surprised at how much better than I was expecting it was.

Supposedly Robin Williams blamed the ads for the movie's box office failure and threatened never to work with Disney again.


Another infamous example is the trailer for Kangaroo Jack, which if you're like me you assumed the movie was about a talking kangaroo, judging from the trailer, right? Nope, instead that's simply a hallucination sequence.

And finally this isn't quite an example of a movie being different so much as a trailer making you think the final movie will be much better than it turns out to be, the trailer for Man of Steel.

I remember hearing this described as "Terrence Malick's Superman" and going by the trailer I was definitely expecting to like the final movie, instead I hated it, but I still like this trailer.

 

[XYZpdq]

I recall vaguely recall ads for Fight Club making it look like it was about guys fighting each other in a club like some MMA thing.

 

[Rice Is Ready]

Damn old movie trailers are the shit. Even if the movie was terrible the trailer is probably great.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

 

[The Nothingness]

Based on the trailer, you would think it was a standard horror movie before the Slender Man phenomenon. That is until the twist.

Spoiler: Subverting Your Expectations

It turns out Jessica Biel's character is not the actual mother of the son who gets taken but is the abductor of said child (the one who takes him in the trailer is his real mom). Julia (Jessica Biel) is part of an organization that "rescues" children by taking them bad homes (ones with poverty and abuse) and putting them in good ones (ones that are wealthy and have adults who love and care for the kids). To keep the organization a secret, Julia admits she kidnapped and murdered all the children that went missing in her poverty-stricken town.

Obviously this big reveal got a mixed reception.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

Endless Summer part 2.

When I saw that trailer I remember thinking the movie was going to be badass and crazy. Mostly because of that kickass crocodile that tries to bite them.

I saw the movie and it wasn't dangerous and it was boring.

 

[MediocreMilt]

Looks like a Bad Boys-esque Buddy-Cop Action movie right?

Well, no. Christian Bale has serious PTSD from Iraq or Afghanistan and is spiraling into a bad drug problem that drags all his friends and relationships into the gutter with him.

 

[2021Murder]

Based on the trailer, you would think it was a standard horror movie before the Slender Man phenomenon. That is until the twist.

Spoiler: Subverting Your Expectations

It turns out Jessica Biel's character is not the actual mother of the son who gets taken but is the abductor of said child (the one who takes him in the trailer is his real mom). Julia (Jessica Biel) is part of an organization that "rescues" children by taking them bad homes (ones with poverty and abuse) and putting them in good ones (ones that are wealthy and have adults who love and care for the kids). To keep the organization a secret, Julia admits she kidnapped and murdered all the children that went missing in her poverty-stricken town.

Obviously this big reveal got a mixed reception.

The twist is that shes an employee for Child Protective Services? Thats as awful of a twist as that scene in Snowpiercer where the baby eaters are horrified to have been eating bugs (a korean delicacy)

 

[Scratch This Nut]

Just about everyone who saw the trailer didn’t expect it to be an allegory for the Old Testament.

Or a baby getting eaten.

 

[MysticMisty]

So, The Weather Man seems like a dumb but funny movie. The kind where the laughs are cheap and dumb but you laugh anyway. That's what my mom and I thought after seeing that trailer. We never saw it in theaters but we did rent it on DVD eventually.

It's all a lie. It's actually a serious drama with only vaguely funny things every now and then. His wife hates him and divorces him, his daughter doesn't particularly like him either (also she wears pants that emphasize her underage camel toe), his son is a teenage felon (and when a life coach as part of his probation helps him turn his life around he then attempts to molest the son), and his father has terminal cancer and eventually dies.

Every scene in the trailer where something goes wrong with his family that seems like it's supposed to be funny? They overreact and make a point to see him as a monster over fucking nothing. His wife freaks the fuck out over the snowball and forgetting the tarter sauce, the daughter pitches a fit when he won't carry her off the ice when she falls, also immediately gives up at archery because she got slightly hurt and was assmad that it didn't involve shooting live deer. And none of it is presented in a way to garner laughs like the trailer does.

 

[Burning Fanatic]

The most recent (and prominent) example I think of is It Comes at Night (2017). The idiots who did the marketing made the film out to be some incredibly creepy horror flick, when in reality, it was this slow-burn of a film. I liked it for what it was, yet it still was so frustrating to be completely lied to.

 

[eldri]

The trailer implies that the film is about a conspiracy in which brands create lovecraftian tulpas that feed off of human desires (which sounds amazing)...

Spoiler: Instead

the so called "monsters" are just the character's imaginations that help him visualize strategies to eventually saturate the market with advertising leading people to consume less.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

I get it, it's hard to make a trailer for a movie that's entirely about people sitting down talking, but the trailer almost made me missed this movie

 

[Dom Cruise]

The trailer implies that the film is about a conspiracy in which brands create lovecraftian tulpas that feed off of human desires (which sounds amazing)...

Spoiler: Instead

the so called "monsters" are just the character's imaginations that help him visualize strategies to eventually saturate the market with advertising leading people to consume less.

I remember seeing the trailer for that before The Amazing Spider-Man and the collective vibe of "WTF?" from the audience.

If nothing else the movie did at least predict the normalization of obesity in advertisements.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The 1992 box office bomb Radio Flyer was marketed to look like it was one of those late 80's/early 90's "Kid Adventure" movies like The Goonies, Home Alone, or 3 Ninjas.

The movie itself is actually a harrowing tragedy about the horrors of child abuse, with a few token dream sequences and a mind screwy ending.

 

[Uranus Pink]

Looking at this trailer one would think it will be an isekai type fantasy movie, but

Spoiler

Terabithia is just the MC imagination while not doing much of anything in his treehouse.

İ have not seen the movie, but have seen the utter shitshow of everyone who seen the movie were speeddialing the fuck out of the internet to warn everyone else to not see it when it came out.

 

[Idiotron]

Check out this exciting trailer for The Adjustment Bureau:

Looks like some drama/action/thriller based on the trailer, right?
This was also not long after the Bourne trilogy ended and Damon was an action star.

Then you actually watch the movie and it's a cute little romance with some supernatural elements for decoration.
It's decent but that marketing was horrible.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Alien 3 Teaser Trailer

This teaser for Alien 3 was extremely misleading in more ways than one. The film was director David Fincher's first feature film.

youtu.be

I love Alien 3 especially the Assembly Cut but holy fuck.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

How about The Exorcism of Emily Rose

The trailer makes it look like a run of the mill exorcism movie that is filled with scares.

And then you watch the movie and...yeah that's not really what it is. It is more of a courtroom drama. Actually, I preferred the direction they went with because that was at least somewhat different from all the Exorcist knockoffs out there, but I remember people being mad about it when it came out because they were expecting a scare-fest, and instead they got a "boring" courtroom drama.

Oh and how about this one: Fight Club

If you've read the book, you would know what the story is supposed to be about and you would also know that the Fight Club is more of a reason to bring the group of characters together than it is what the story is really about.

The trailers themselves are not that misleading IIRC, and were close to the more cerebral elements of the film, but I do remember seeing some TV spots that REALLY pushed the fighting as a selling point of the movie. It was like they were selling a boxing/MMA movie or something. I don't remember hearing it, but I can picture some jacked up teens going into the movie expecting a ton of fighting and then being completely lost by what they saw.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Looking at this trailer one would think it will be an isekai type fantasy movie, but

Spoiler

Terabithia is just the MC imagination while not doing much of anything in his treehouse.

İ have not seen the movie, but have seen the utter shitshow of everyone who seen the movie were speeddialing the fuck out of the internet to warn everyone else to not see it when it came out.

Isn't this book assigned reading to everyone in middle school, though? Not knowing the premise and shock ending to this story is like not knowing that Old Yeller ends with the dog getting shot for rabies.