When we're deciding what movie we want to go to, we look at the names behind the productions, ask our friends for their opinions, and, of course, watch the official trailers. In fact, the latter influences the decision three times more than any other source.
However, what you see is not always what you get. Recently, in a post on the subreddit r/movies, Redditor u/sonofwelk asked cinephiles to name the films that they think turned out to be completely different from their trailers, and people shared a lot of interesting examples, reminding us to stay wary of marketing when purchasing our next ticket.
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*Galaxy Quest* the trailer promoted it as a kids movie basically but in reality it’s the best Star Trek movie ever made
Downsizing
A modern comedy take on Honey I Shrunk the Kids?
No. A confusing climate change apocalypse movie.
We managed to get in touch with u/sonofwelk and they kindly agreed to tell us more about the thread they started.
"My wife and I were killing time during a long drive home and talking about early noughties actors and actresses, and Mena Suvari came up," the Redditor told Bored Panda about the origins of their now-viral post. "I explained to her about this weird film I watched called 'Loser' and she had never heard of it."
"When we got home, I showed her the trailer (because I like to be right, which is not often), however, the trailer was nothing like the film I described to her in the car. "It got me thinking about other films that had been mismarketed and so I posted onto r/movies."
Bridge to Terabithia.
The trailers implied that it was going to be a whimsical chuldrens fantasy similar to Narnia.
In reality it was a coming of age tale dealing with sudden death and loss
I read the book when I was a kid, so I was thrown off when I first saw the trailer. I thought they took Terabithia literally and made a movie about it. I am glad that I was wrong, as the movie is basically a shot for shot adaptation of the book, just set in the mid 2000s instead of the 70s
I watched this expecting it to be a children's fantasy and was bawling my eyes out by the end - still a great movie but it really caught me out!
I’ll answer this for my late mother, who I went to see Thelma & Louise with because she thought it was a wacky female road trip adventure comedy from the commercials. Wrong.
Opening a major motion picture can be a very daunting task. You have to create an internationally recognized brand name that lasts a lifetime and do it in a couple of weeks with no second chances to course-correct.
And with so much money involved, there's no point in making a $100 or $ 200 million dollar movie if no one knows about it. And the execs know it. Spiderman 2, which had a production cost of $200 million, racked up another $75 million in expenses for marketing.
Stranger Than Fiction. The trailer included all of the comedy scenes from the movie and made it seem like it was a wacky story because it starred Will Ferrell. The movie is actually quite serious for the premise and Will Ferrell delivered a wonderful dramatic performance.
This is my favorite Will Ferrell movie. Emma Thompson was fantastic as always.
Click, thought it was another Adam Sandler goofball comedy where he could control time…bawled my eyes out the last 20 minutes
And since we already know that trailers are critical to a film's box office performance, it's no surprise that they sit at the heart of marketing campaigns.
"Trailers are 100% designed for targeted/tailored audiences (remember the first The Jungle Book trailer? It was first released with The Force Awakens and looked like a much darker take than the '67 version)," u/sonofwelk said. "Sometimes it is to cover up how terrible the movie is, for example, Suicide Squad or Battle Los Angeles, and sometimes it's because production companies have no idea how to market the film."
*Hancock* isn’t a drunk superhero like it seems in the trailer he is a drunk Angel. It’s weird.
The first half was pretty good...nice concept...lost me with the plot holes in the second half.
Not trailer but I remember the bus advertising for Slumdog Millionaire in the uk tagged it as “the feel good movie of the year”. Yeah that’s a no.
It's true that trailers are, at least in part, shots in the dark. After all, almost all the money the distributor will spend promoting a movie will be committed before it is released.
Because of that, they won't know if they have spent wisely until the movie opens in cinemas and starts collecting money from the paying public.
Fight Club comes to mind. Obviously they wouldn’t give away the twist but the trailer made it look like just a bunch of guys who organized bar fights.
He's not allowed to talk about it. Rule one.
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Since I've never seen "Fight Club", I don't know what twist they're referring to. People are strangely reluctant to talk about this move.
It's a bit of a mind f**k, and it's hard to give away bits, because part of why some people like this movies was for the mindf**k. We don't want to deny you the privilege of yelling "Son of a b***h!!!" at the screen when/if you finally watch it 😁
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Still don't know what's the plot of that movie. I half watched, half slept through it.
How has nobody mentioned *Jarhead*?
The trailers made it out to be a Gulf War-era testosterone laced action romp. This was insane given the minimal amount of action shown in any of the trailers.
In reality, what we got was a deep character study on the futility and "shut up and wait" aspect of war. To be clear, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, especially during subsequent viewings once my expectations were fully tempered.
Similar things can be said about *Three Kings*, although trailers for that film leaned more into the comedy aspects of the film.
That was likely intentional. Just like real military recruiting, the movie was marketed as this non-stop action fest with cool gunfights and Marines in dress blues. Turns out, the actual job/movie is just 95% waiting, cleaning, meat beating, and jerkbag SNCOs, with 5% terror filled action.
The lines get blurry when we start talking about manipulation, too. Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, for example, have admitted to using footage that doesn't make it into the final cut of their films in their trailers to "preserve the surprise of the narrative."
“We talked about all scales of marketing,” Joe Russo said. “The thing that’s most important to us is that we preserve the surprise of the narrative. When I was a kid and saw The Empire Strikes Back at 11 am on the day it opened… It so profoundly moved me because I didn’t know a damn thing about the story I was going to watch. We’re trying to replicate that experience.”
The Village. The trailer made it seem like a super natural creature flick. Turned out to be a period romance/ drama.
Once I got over not getting the movie in the trailer, I grew to love it. I think it’s one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever watched.
The weird thing about Shama-lama-ding-dong, is that after the success of, "The Sixth Sense" he did a series of interviews where he stated he didn't want to become known as, "the Twist Guy". Yet every single one of his movies...over which he has control as Producer, Writer, Director...a "twist" ending.
Ad Astra looked like an exciting Sci fi movie, instead it was a boring Sci fi movie
Joe explained how he and Anthony “use all the material that we have at our disposal to create a trailer. We look at the trailer as a very different experience than the movie, and I think audiences are so predictive now that you have to be very smart about how you craft a trailer because an audience can watch a trailer and basically tell you what’s gonna happen in the film.”
The trailer for Godzilla (2014) was about 50% Bryan Cranston, who was super-popular after Breaking Bad. You'd think he was actually the protagonist, but if you watch the movie, he's only got a few scenes.
He had a great set up too. Man who's wife was killed in an accident at the nuclear plant which was implied to be caused by the MUTO egg hatching/, beginning to wake up so OF COURSE he'll be the protagonist and help to stop the MUTOs and Godzilla to get closure on his wife's death, right? Nah he dies at the first sign of trouble and his boring son takes over. This is why I was on Kong's side during Godzilla Vs Kong, Kong: Skull Island was a way better movie.
OMG! Chasing Amy. Probably the best experience I've ever had in a movie theater.
Middle-aged women in pairs coming to see the cute rom-com with Ben Affleck treated to a Kevin Smith vulgarity festival. I laughed way harder at their reactions than at the movie itself.
In part, u/sonofwelk agrees. "A great movie trailer tells you nothing, but it stays with you long past the 2-minute run time," the Redditor and movie enthusiast said. "I remember how excited I was by Battle Los Angeles — the haunting music, the grainy news footage, the fact that we knew next to nothing about the plot. Turned out to be a right pile of bollocks."
"Another great trailer for a mediocre film was Man of Steel with the voice of Zod over the top. I think it would be cheating to have any film trailer by Nolan on this list," u/sonofwelk added, highlighting that at the end of the day, the movie has to deliver, no matter how exciting the trailer was.
‘Nope’ - in a good way as it allows you to make some assumptions about the visual cues but whips several of them away when watching the movie.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
They made it look like a really cool rootin' tootin' cowboy shootin' adventure, when in reality it was a very slow-paced drama, and a character study on depression, paranoia, and obsession.
Turns out, that was just fine by me. It's one of my all time favorite movies, and I'd even go so far as to say it's a *perfect* movie.
Everything about it is just flawless, imo.
The casting, writing, acting, cinematography, the score (omg, the score...), it's just absolutely beautifully done.
This is a prominent one from my childhood because it was a huge bait n switch: Snow Dogs.
The main trailer showed a bunch of talking huskies on a beach making fun of their musher (Played by Cuba Gooding Jr). To me (and my mom) it seemed like an amusing movie with talking dogs who clearly get up to hijinks.
Instead, Snow Dogs, while humorous, was about a Florida dentist's journey in discovering he'd been adopted after inheriting a team of sled dogs from a woman in Alaska. He travels to the small village of Tolketna to sort out the affair and learns about his mother, the previous owner of the dogs, and ends up falling in love with Alaska, the dogs, and the friendly local bartender.
Little me didn't actually really get the story all that well, but adult me appreciates it for what it is. I've got a fondness for it, even if it's a mediocre movie, because a) hits close to home: my mom was adopted too; b) it was filmed in Canada close to where I now live; and c) one of the main dogs was a border collie, and my best friend growing up was a border collie.
Yeah, this one almost fooled me when it came out into thinking the movie revolved around a bunch of goofy talking dogs. I didn't go see it after reading the review mentioning what it really was about. In reality, it was a dream sequence and the dogs didn't actually talk. When the trailers for Kangaroo Jack came out, I figured it was the same bait and switch gag.
Antebellum
The trailer manipulated movie footage to create the illusion of supernatural or sci fi elements. There was nothing like that in the actual movie.
For example the little girl in the hotel hallway was manipulated to look like a ghost in the trailer. It was actually just a normal little girl. The glitching airplane flying over the cotton field in the trailer indicated time travel or parallel universes, but it was just a normal airplane in present day. There was no glitching in the movie. It was a deliberate deceptive tactic.
It Comes At Night is the first film that comes to mind. It was marketed as a post apocalyptic horror thriller, but it’s actually a claustrophobic character study about paranoia. Still a great film, but it got a lot of hate because the trailer made it look like a completely different film.
Maleficent-was expecting a dark retelling of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty because of the title character being the villain of Sleeping Beauty. Instead gets a movie that completely misses the point of this character and why people love Maleficent by making her the good fairy.
Now don’t get me wrong I understand the messages of the movie and its allegories referenced the original story (not Disney’s original, but the other one where Talia wakes up giving birth to her twins) but I would forgive it if Angelina morphed into Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Maleficent hated Aurora because she wanted her dead because her parents didn’t invite her. Her discovering her powers and becoming the mistress of all evil would be a much better movie than a revenge-redemption story.
I think it was the beginning of Disney's "all villains are just missunderstood heroes" trip they are on since a few years
The Happening. Marketed as a horror/thriller, plot twist, it is a deadpan comedy hiding in plain sight.
Some of the weirdest acting choices ever committed to film. I think Zoey might have actually been on Xanax while filming, the way her character drifted through her scenes, and dialogue.
Sucker Punch
The trailer for 500 Days of Summer made it look much funnier and more light hearted
It is...until you get to the reality of it. 100% worth the watch though.
2 I can think of
Drive trailers made it out to be a car chase centric thrill ride. In reality, all car scenes were shown in their entirety in the trailers.
Adventureland trailers promised a screwball raunchy comedy. In reality, it was a very good coming of age drama.
The Grey. The trailers made it seem like "Taken..... WITH WOLVES!!"
Instead, bleak existential drama. Very strange experience.
[About Time](https://youtube.com/watch?v=u2PUMA6nFWk) made it seem like it's entirely a pure *get the girl* rom-com
George Miller's *Happy Feet* is my go-to example. Trailers were happy-go-lucky and cute. The film was that too. . .but also big and weird and sad and genuinely experimental, especially for a big-budget studio animated film. For some (like myself) it really worked. For others, it came off as confrontational and "too much for a children's film."
Having talked to people that worked on it, this was intentional because they had no idea how to market the movie's wildly varying tone, or it's darker sequences, or it's religious and Environmentalist subtexts, so they culled most of the stuff from the first thirty minutes and went with what was safest. Miller later said of the marketing (and I'm paraphrasing, it was a long time ago) that it was like the studio was "just trying to market a new flavor of Coke."
Age of Ultron had the trailer like set in grim dark world with the heroes are getting shattered. The movies is all jokes and quips.
I'd add the Black Widow movie to this list, too, for similar reasons. It was horrible. The trailer (not to mention everything Natalie has ever said in every marvel movie) made it seem like it was going to be dark and sinister, about the horrible things she went through. Her awesome training and how she became who she is. NOPE. It's a straight up comedy with like 2 serious scenes and even those weren't that serious. What a let down. I thought we were going to get Batman Begins and instead we got Shameless.
Halloween Ends. There is so much cut content in the trailers...
Note: this post originally had 36 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
The trailers for Rango made it look like a goofy animal Western parody. I think this was mainly because it was produced by Nickelodeon. In actuality, the Western part is played seriously and there are a lot of adult jokes and surprisingly, a lot of cursing for a "children's" movie. I thought it was awesome. Yet there was a woman in the movie theater who was actually a poll taker for the film and mentioned that a lot of parents were complaining and taking their kids out of the film early. Another film, ParaNorman, seemed like it would be a zombie apocolypse film for kids, when it was actually very much about anti-bullying. Still a good film though. Also, Where the Wild Things Are was actually quite dark in spite of the wholesome looking trailer for it. I actually saw a parent take their kid out of the theater when I saw it.
Princess Bride. They didn't even know how to market it since it checked so many boxes. Family friendly romance adventure comedy. Luckily, it garnered a following after going to video.
In Bruges was one for me. Trailer made it seem much more of a straight comedy than it was. Thankfully the movie is better than the trailer implied, though very dark at times. One of my all time favourites
Parenthood, the trailer made it look like a typical Steve Martin "hijinks" type film, and it was actually a touching, beautifully observed, desperately accurate portrayal of family life. (Whilst I have an audience, go watch Penelope, it's the best modern fairy tale you've not seen)
I love Parenthood. The humor, the evolution in the characters, and the communication between the characters was tied together so well.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are cases whether the creators seem to have said, "We know this is what you want, but we have our own agenda, and we want to preach to you, so we're going to promise it's what you want to watch, but it's really what we want to tell you."
Not sure how it was originally marketed, but one afternoon when I was home sick, I saw a TV Guide listing for Sally Field's "comedy," Sybil. It's about a woman who was sexually abused so badly as a child by her mother that she developed split-personality disorder. About the furthest thing I could imagine from a "comedy."
A man called Otto! The trailer made it seem like a quirky comedy about a old man befriending his neighbors. NOPE!!! It's about a man trying to commit suicide for 2 f*****g hours. Where's the f*****g trigger warning?!
The book that the movie is based on is a pretty big trigger warning.
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The Predator. The trailer showed a scientist getting encase in a predator super battle armour with multiple lock on capabilities and lots of battles between soldiers, predators and elite super predators. The suit appears at the end of the credits and the action was very limited. More like a film on par with Spy Kids with swearing rather than the usual action from other predator films. Still, it's watchable.
Chernobyl Diaries looked like a horror/suspense movie in a well known abandoned and dangerous place. Actual film painted victims of fallout as monsters with a military intervention for seemingly no reason.
Really? Not one mention on this list of Jennifer's Body? I loved it, but it was definitely marketed badly.
Kangaroo Jack. They took a single scene of the CGI kangaroo and made it look like we'd get a wise-cracking talking animal playing opposite the guys from Sliders.
"The Jesus Revolution" which was just released. The trailers had me expecting an uplifting story of one stuck-in-his-ways-and-beliefs pastor growing in acceptance and friendship with hippie culture. As it turns out, this was a very small piece of a wider picture, and several darker elements of human nature are brought to bear. Not a bad movie per say, but not the emotions I went in intending to feel
The trailers for Rango made it look like a goofy animal Western parody. I think this was mainly because it was produced by Nickelodeon. In actuality, the Western part is played seriously and there are a lot of adult jokes and surprisingly, a lot of cursing for a "children's" movie. I thought it was awesome. Yet there was a woman in the movie theater who was actually a poll taker for the film and mentioned that a lot of parents were complaining and taking their kids out of the film early. Another film, ParaNorman, seemed like it would be a zombie apocolypse film for kids, when it was actually very much about anti-bullying. Still a good film though. Also, Where the Wild Things Are was actually quite dark in spite of the wholesome looking trailer for it. I actually saw a parent take their kid out of the theater when I saw it.
Princess Bride. They didn't even know how to market it since it checked so many boxes. Family friendly romance adventure comedy. Luckily, it garnered a following after going to video.
In Bruges was one for me. Trailer made it seem much more of a straight comedy than it was. Thankfully the movie is better than the trailer implied, though very dark at times. One of my all time favourites
Parenthood, the trailer made it look like a typical Steve Martin "hijinks" type film, and it was actually a touching, beautifully observed, desperately accurate portrayal of family life. (Whilst I have an audience, go watch Penelope, it's the best modern fairy tale you've not seen)
I love Parenthood. The humor, the evolution in the characters, and the communication between the characters was tied together so well.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are cases whether the creators seem to have said, "We know this is what you want, but we have our own agenda, and we want to preach to you, so we're going to promise it's what you want to watch, but it's really what we want to tell you."
Not sure how it was originally marketed, but one afternoon when I was home sick, I saw a TV Guide listing for Sally Field's "comedy," Sybil. It's about a woman who was sexually abused so badly as a child by her mother that she developed split-personality disorder. About the furthest thing I could imagine from a "comedy."
A man called Otto! The trailer made it seem like a quirky comedy about a old man befriending his neighbors. NOPE!!! It's about a man trying to commit suicide for 2 f*****g hours. Where's the f*****g trigger warning?!
The book that the movie is based on is a pretty big trigger warning.
Load More Replies... The Predator. The trailer showed a scientist getting encase in a predator super battle armour with multiple lock on capabilities and lots of battles between soldiers, predators and elite super predators. The suit appears at the end of the credits and the action was very limited. More like a film on par with Spy Kids with swearing rather than the usual action from other predator films. Still, it's watchable.
Chernobyl Diaries looked like a horror/suspense movie in a well known abandoned and dangerous place. Actual film painted victims of fallout as monsters with a military intervention for seemingly no reason.
Really? Not one mention on this list of Jennifer's Body? I loved it, but it was definitely marketed badly.
Kangaroo Jack. They took a single scene of the CGI kangaroo and made it look like we'd get a wise-cracking talking animal playing opposite the guys from Sliders.
"The Jesus Revolution" which was just released. The trailers had me expecting an uplifting story of one stuck-in-his-ways-and-beliefs pastor growing in acceptance and friendship with hippie culture. As it turns out, this was a very small piece of a wider picture, and several darker elements of human nature are brought to bear. Not a bad movie per say, but not the emotions I went in intending to feel
