Most Misleading Movie Trailers

[Chainsawmidget]

Movie Trailers are meant to get you interested in a movie and give you a quick glimpse as to what the movie is going to be like, so you know whether you want to see it or not. 

Sometimes it doesn't work like that though.  Sometimes the trailer barley has anything to do with the plot or the feel of the movie itself. 

For instance, Kangaroo Jack.  The trailer made it feel like it was going to be a goofy talking animal movie where in fact there's only about a scene or two where the animal actually talks. 

Moving from one extremely hairy Jack to another, Jack , the Robin Williams movie was shown as a light hearted wacky comedy when in fact it's about a little bot that aged way too fast and was going to die way too young. 

The Exorcism of Emily Rose was billed as a horror movie when it's actually a courtroom drama. 

From the trailer and the box art Amusement looks to be a killer clown movie, when the clown isn't really important to the movie at all. 

So, what others can you think of where the trailer doesn't match the movie?

[Nathan45]

As a example of a trailer being misleading in a good way, Shutter Island's trailer made it look like a straight horror movie, when it was more of a psychological thriller.  Since this meant the entire movie was not spoiled, I actually appreciated that.

[AndyC]

I think of The Thin Red Line (1998). The trailer looks like a star-studded, action-packed war epic. The movie is this long, slow, meandering, artsy thing, with a bit of action. And some of the "stars" billed in the trailer appear in what amount to cameos. I found it hugely disappointing at the time, largely because the marketing of the movie was so misleading. It might be a good movie, but I hated it, in large part because it wasn't what I went there expecting to see. Not a total bait-and-switch, but the trailer was very misleadingly put together. It gives the impression of an action movie with moments of artistry, when it is in fact an artistic movie with moments of action.

I think most trailers are misleading to a degree. Even when they don't totally misrepresent the movie, a lot of them edit together little snippets of action and bites of dialogue out of context, to suggest events that don't actually happen in the movie. Even if it's a little thing that doesn't change my overall impression of the movie, it's annoying.

[SPazzo]

To misquote a book on filmmaking I read a while back:  "I hate movie trailers.  They lie.  I almost didn't go see Walk the Line (Johnny Cash film) because the trailer made it look like The OC!"

Also, the trailer for the Disney film Snow Dogs, like Kangaroo Jack, made it seem like a talking animal goofy comedy, when in reality, the dogs only talk in the protagonist's dream.  The film is really about a man going to Alaska to find his father.  Not a bad movie really, just not a goofy kids comedy.

[Raffine]

Most of the trailers for Tim Burton's SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007) showed no footage of people singing - which was news to audience members who had no idea they going to see a film version of what basically is an operetta. IMDB was full of comments by folks who were horrified they had been 'tricked' into seeing a musical!  

[claws]

Though the trailer for The Temp (1993) is deceiving and sort of misleading:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o1ysiuD9-8

More than 50% of the Trailer footage is not in the actual movie.

[BTM]

Well, Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase made the movie seem like a comedy, when it really wasn't.

One of the trailers for Falling Down made it look like a wish fulfillment fantasy/comedy of a man going nuts in the city.

The trailer for Changing Lanes with Samuel Jackson and Ben Affleck made it look like a road rage/action suspense type movie, with the retaliations between the two characters escalating to dangerous levels.  The truth is though, it's actually a drama for the most part.

[Doggett]

From the trailer and the box art Amusement looks to be a killer clown movie, when the clown isn't really important to the movie at all. 

Glad I wasn't the only one who fell for that !

[AndyC]

One of the trailers for Falling Down made it look like a wish fulfillment fantasy/comedy of a man going nuts in the city.

I remember the "Bill Foster does what you've always wanted to do" TV spots for that one. On the bright side, the movie ended up being a pleasant surprise in that case. It's still one of my all-time favourites.

The friends I saw it with, who really would have preferred a comedy about a guy going nuts in the city, didn't enjoy it quite so much, although I think it still had enough laughs to satisfy them. Perfect example of a serious movie that effectively incorporates a lot of humour, although of a darkly satirical variety.

Well, Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase made the movie seem like a comedy, when it really wasn't.

Almost every serious movie that stars a comedic actor seems to do this. It's as if the studio is afraid a comedian's fans won't watch him in a serious movie, so the trailer pretends to give them what they're expecting, in a gamble that they really will enjoy the movie if they give it a chance. The problem with that is, for a lot of people, getting at least the type of movie they expect is a big part of enjoying it. And it's a fact that a good many of those comedy fans won't like a serious movie regardless. So your word-of-mouth comes from people outside the movie's target audience, who feel ripped off.

The same thing happened when Robin Williams first started doing more serious movies. For The Fisher King, they emphasized Williams clowning around, as though it was a comedy. Same with The World According to Garp.

[The Burgomaster]

This one is sort of misleading . . . it makes the movie look like a run-of-the-mill (and possibly cheesy) thriller.  But it's actually a pretty good movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Certd-py8Ms

[ChaosTheory]

Ages ago I saw this trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4sZaoqLfBM
When I finally saw it I was surprised - it was quite a bit darker & more substantial than I was expecting. 

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS - trailer made it look like it would be screwball nonstop action, also neglected to show the audience that like 90% of it would be subtitled
IN BRUGES - I was expecting something a lot more lighthearted from the trailer
I ended up loving alll these movies, but I imagine some people were disappointed.

The most disappointing misleading trailer I remember was when Star Wars Ep 1 was coming out, they had one that centered around Darth Maul with a tagline like "fear is my power" and I thought "this movie will be AMAZING!"  not realizing that basically Maul's entire screen time was shown in that trailer

[BTM]

Also, the trailer for John Carpenter's Vampires with it's fast editing, and Marlynn Manson's "Beautiful People" blaring over the soundtrack, made it look like it'd be another action/horror film a la Dusk Till Dawn, and what he got was... well, not really that exciting, IMHO. 

[66Crush]

"Napolean Dynamite" had none of the funny stuff in trailer. I didn't care about seeing it untill my friends started telling me how funny it was. "Twilight" seemed more like a real horror film in the early previews. The romance was played down. "E.T." was hard to define. The early trailer's looked a little creepy and people were not expecting the emotional ride they were taken on. Of course at the time there was no other movie like it, so I would have hated to be the one to have to decide how the trailer should look.

[RD]

"E.T." was hard to define. The early trailer's looked a little creepy and people were not expecting the emotional ride they were taken on.

It's interesting you bring that up because ET started out as a Horror film. You can read about it in the book Greatest Sci Fi movies never made. After close encounters Spielberg wanted to do a different type of alien film.  It would be villainous aliens torturing a family on an isolated farm.   Rewrites introduced a slow witted, friendly alien that helps the family and the filmmakers saw the success starwars had with merchandising, and decided to make a more appealing family film. Rick Baker was even hired to do the aliens, but was fired when he wouldn't agree to go back from scratch and do them "cute". Though the horror vision did end up getting made with Ghosts as Poltergeist.

[BTM]

Some of the trailers for the first Transformers film had it look like a suspenseful, sci-fi action movie, you wouldn't even suspect the first half hour or so is some goofy kid and his new cars Herbie like antics.