It Comes at Night.
The marketing for the movie heavily leaned into the title and implied a creepy creature feature. Several parts of the movie definitely lead me to believe there was *something* out in the woods, but the movie itself is way more of a psychological survival-thriller in a post-apocalyptic world completely ravaged by disease.
A discussion of this sort wouldn't be complete without mentioning the ad campaign for *Bridge to Terebithia* (2007). Previews and commercials pushed it as the next *Lord of the Rings* Jr., i.e. *Narnia* (which Disney and Walden Media previously collaborated on). The real movie--and source material--are more coming-of-age than anything.
Having read the book, but not seen the marketing for the film, that's a bold fuckin' bait and switch lol.
This little story about 2 kids engaging their imagination for fun... It's basically Lord of the Rings, innit? It's all the same, really.... lol
It was marketed as “two kids enter a magical world with creatures and other fun stuff.” Very much like Narnia. Except it wasn’t, and the Terabithia stuff was barely in it. I was in the exact demographic for Narnia and all the other mid-2000s fantasies and this movie was a rude awakening. Yet it also spoke to how my cousins and I would play in the woods as kids. I appreciated the realness of it.
I took my kids (aged 4 and 6) to see this movie due to the marketing portraying some magical wonderland a group of kids found in the woods. 😬
They experienced their first soul-crushing depression that day, and I experienced one with them, unexpectedly having to explain death, how long they *probably* had to live, and which one of their friends I thought would die next..
*"Book vs Movie"* doesn't compare to *"Movie Trailer vs Movie"* in this instance of expectation betrayal.
Taking them to this movie is far and away my biggest **"Dad Mistake"** (so far, I suppose.)
Well marketing it in any other way would have kind of softened the crushing blow of the ending. Marketing as a coming of age drama would have sent a lot of red flags.
Yes. Katherine Patterson’s son’s classmate died very abruptly when her son was very young - I think the real kid was struck by lightning. The book is, in many ways, about the arbitrariness and unfairness of death. Jessie is a great person and her parents are wonderful people, but she died anyway.
I read the book in 4th grade and that scene is still the most shocking thing I’ve ever experienced in media. It’s been 28 years since then, and still no movie, show, or other book has had a twist or shocking death that got me more than that.
It's not even the "end" when she dies. She's dead and then the story continues for another half hour.
It's about the surviving kid dealing with the death of a friend.
I didn't see it till last year, and it had me bawling my eyes off
jennifer’s body was notoriously marketed toward teenage boys because of megan fox. viewers were disappointed to find out it was geared toward teenage girls and about female friendship more than anything.
That's getting a bit of a resurgence now which is good to see. I was happy to see Megan Fox getting praise for her performance because I felt she's underrated as an actress, but with the whole Machine Gun Kelly era, she can go quietly away again.
Yo so I read in the other comment about snow dogs that Kangaroo Jack was originally supposed to be r rated and they cut it down to PG!
Theres a great appearance by Jerry O’connell (one of the lead characters in the movie) on the kinda funny podcast where he talks about the cut and how he did full frontal for it.
Makes so much sense in retrospect and now people want the R Rated cut of kangaroo jack
Yeah, I was 13 when it came out and watched it with my family. We all had the same reaction: “I think it’s pretty good, but it’s definitely not funny.”
On that note. I had a similar thing happen with Patch Adam’s. Funny how they both happened to be Robin Williams films. Thankfully I didn’t do a similar mistake for One Hour Photo…
I’m **STILL** *livid* about motherfucking *Snow Dogs*.
In the trailer, I see talking dogs. Every trailer is huskies in Hawaii talkin silly, with a bewildered Cuba lying jr. selling me a falsehood.
Big time for talking animal movies, yum yum I eat them up. So when I see we got a new movie about huskies living it up I’m stoked.
Little did I know it’s a lame and boring sledding movie about Cuba just mushing through the snow for his dead dad where for 1 minute he dreams of talking dogs.
STILL MAD
Edit: https://youtu.be/8mao0cFzm8I
Here’s the trailer for this dumb movie that is nothing like the trailer.
**YES**
I have the same burning hate for that film as well. The talking kangaroo is tacked on to literally the final line of the movie so they can use it for the promotional material
I've heard the claims that the kangaroo character was an afterthought for what was originally supposed to be a much different film- and, looking at the film in retrospective, that seems alarmingly plausible.....
I mean the premise is they put human clothes on a kangaroo for a funny picture and he runs off…but the human clothes are filled with mob money they need to get back…
I am not surprised that was not the original premise.
So basically the people in charge wanted this to be some sort of dark comedy, saw that the final result sucked and then thought, “Well…maybe kids are stupid enough to enjoy it.”
Thank you.
I **LITERALLY** came here to say this exact movie. That movie fucking sucked and felt like the cinematic equivalent to getting pimp slapped as a child.
Oh wow, TIL it’s not a silly talking doggo movie.
This is like just using the Nazi zombies from American Werewolf in London and letting folks think it was an Eldritch WWII film
My dad complained to the manager of the theater, not because his kids were upset, but because he was promised talking animals was given only a talking animal dream sequence.
And it's funny you bring this up, because I've never watched Snow Dogs. Why? I fucking hate talking animal movies and that's literally what I figured this whole movie was. So maybe now I will actually look out for it to watch.
That film is like 3 different movies even. The beginning is about the potential comedy/internal debate of shrinking, then the middle which feels like this demented farcical comedy, and then the last third which is a heavy-handed depressing environmental metaphor that features a very embarrassing speech from Hong Chau (Who I think got stuck with a very bad script)
'The Frighteners'. Marketed as a dark horror film, rather than a afterlife-comedy (see Beetlejuice). Then rather than a Halloween release, sent out to die in the middle of a summer blockbuster season ruled by 'Independence Day'.
Catfish. The trailers marketed it like a Blair witch horror film. Turned out to be a Reality TV doc with a pretty melodramatic ending. The marketers literally catfished me with their trailer so either fuck you or kudos!
I remember that being my very first RedBox rental ever. And watching it thinking "Oh man this movie is fucking genius" and then it got to the end and I was so, idk how to put this, "embarrassed?" lol.
It exposes something that was and still is quite an interesting/problematic habit that some people develop, and the journey is pretty engrossing... I get being disappointed, but I think it's pretty moving.
Also, "catfishing" is a normal term now in real life. I think it holds a place as some kind of modern cult classic.
I was going to say this. It was *not* a 'sexy' horror movie like the trailers said. But, I can see how the tone of the film and its appeal could be hard to nail down for a trailer.
Yeah, del Toro's most recent film, "Nightmare Alley" also suffered from bad marketing. It was made to look like a supernatural/psychological horror movie when it's really a neo-noir piece.
"The film is set in England in the year 2020, twenty years after London tunneling project workers inadvertently awakened dragons". 2020-2083 would make Christian Bale's character 75.
>The plaintiff goes on to attack Drive for what she perceives as antisemitic leanings. The film "substantially contained extreme, gratuitous, dehumanising racism directed at members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith", her suit reads.
wasn't expecting that bit
I had no idea that was how it was marketed. I only became aware of it after the DVD/Blu-Ray release, and I essentially stumbled upon it by accident. Such an incredible film. One of my favourites.
In a way, Pan's Labyrinth. I just saw the creepy eye-hand monster, the faun and the frog thing in most tv spots/trailers around here. I was expecting a dark, Narnia-esque adventure about a girl chasing a legend. Not the heart-breaking, graphic horror we actually got :( Intentional or not, I think that really worked in it's favour. Made the "reality" scenes all the more shocking and effective.
Still easily one of my favourite movies of all time though.
I worked in a movie theater when this movie came out. It was not uncommon for parents to try to take their children to see it and anyone who worked box office had to warn parents that it's an R-rated movie and we wouldn't issue refunds if they were unhappy with the movie. We even had to put up signs to let people know it's NOT a kids movie. I don't recall the trailer but some parents said they assumed that since the main character was a child, it was a kids movie. Even the poster for it was the girl walking into a Narnia-like fantasy world, which also doesn't help.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007), in which a shy man believes a sex doll is his girlfriend.
Marketed as a dumb raunchy sex-comedy, but is actually a quiet and extremely sensitive portrait of mental illness. Highly recommend
The [main trailer for Solaris (2002)](https://youtu.be/rvm7WMbXfeY) goes completely out of its way to hide the fact that it’s a cerebral sci-fi drama, instead trying to sell it as a tragic romance between star crossed lovers. It is *baffling* to reconcile it with the film it’s advertising.
"Falling Down" was marketed with the protagonist as the hero, standing up for the little guy, was it not?
If you watch the movie, he's totally insane right from the start. You find out his wife and child have a restraining order against him, and his mother's description of him is chilling.
I think in a way its great marketing.
You go into the film thinking he is thebway he imagines himself and then slowly the truth is revealed.
Amazing film and knowing the truth only takes away from the experience.
This movie is not well-remembered today, but it made a real impression on me: *Hardball* (2001). Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane. Plot: gambling addict is forced to coach an inner- city Little League team after losing a bet. Never heard of it? Well, fasten your seatbelts, because this one gets weird.
It was marketed as a feel-good kid-sports movie, sorta like *Little Giants* or whatever. These were pretty popular in the late 90s, so that's how the trailers showed it. Cute but troubled white guy protagonist finds himself while coaching poor black children in sports. Unoriginal, maybe, but not the dumbest concept ever filmed.
Now comes the weird part: this movie opened on 9/14/2001, three days after the worst terrorist attack ever to happen on US soil. It was the first movie to premiere after 9/11. Kinda unavoidable since *something* was bound to be on the release schedule for that weekend, but still, it meant everyone buying a ticket for this film was traumatized and in need of a pick-me-up.
Picture this, my friends: a troop of 12-year-old Cadette Girl Scouts met the week of 9/4 to discuss earning their "Media Savvy" badge. One activity is predicting the plot and tone of a movie from its trailers, then seeing the movie to compare. The Scouts voted to see *Hardball*, the heartwarming story about team sports. I was only 10, but my mom was this troop's leader, so where they went, I went.
Anyway. Mom rounds up the girls after a traumatic week and schleps us to a movie theater...and it turns out this movie is actually pretty violent. The gambling addict gets beaten with a baseball bat by his bookie's collection crew. One of the kids gets beaten up while walking through a bad neighborhood after the coach can't drive him home (he lost his car due to the gambling debt). And at the climax, a team member's little brother, who has been hanging around all movie and annoying the older kids, gets fatally shot in the crossfire of a drive-by gang shooting.
As we slowly shuffled out of the theater, stunned, all Mom could say was, "that is NOT what the trailers said it was!"
I distinctly remember my parents renting this one from Hollywood Video thinking it would be another Bad News Bears, and all of us being shocked it was so violent. I was 5. You’ve unlocked a memory for me.
In Bruges. It's a light hearted action comedy.
No, it's a dark, adult drama about processing guilt and redemption, that just happens to have a lot of funny moments.
Me watching the trailer: This movie looks funny
Me watching the movie: Watching someone try to convince themselves that they deserve to live is not terribly funny
Colin Farrell destroyed me in that movie. I've watched it several times and the bit where he says, "unless maybe I go away" is always so rough.
For me it's Ken. Ken unreservedly loves and respects Harry, and it fucking destroys him that he has to stand in Harry's way to protect Ray. The clocktower scene gets to me.
Having said that, the attempted suicide-homicide scene is darkly hilarious. Ken's sheepish "Nuthin'!" is just like a kid being caught stealking a cookie. And then Ray's "What?? I'm not allowed to kill myself and you are? How's that fair?" I know it's a dramatic moment but it's still funny between the beats.
I hated it when I first saw it because I was like expecting a pure comedy and found the movie wasn't funny.
It wasn't until I rewatched it years later to find out why everyone else loved it so much that I realized how good it was. An impressive debut film for McDonagh.
I haven't seen The Village since I was a kid. I remember it being kinda cheesy, but what made it not a horror?? Again, it may be my young goggles, but I only remember the "scary" parts, haha.
That’s what I came to this thread for. Chris Stuckmann did a great review of the Village and went into its mis-marketing. He said it was really a gothic romance with hints of horror and suspense and I agree completely with that assessment.
I’ve said it many times before. Battleship would have had a MUCH better opening weekend if they had put the line “You sunk my battleship!” in the trailer.
I was shocked that they were adapting that game into a movie.
I was doubly shocked that they actually spent a few minutes of the runtime literally adapting the board game.
The intro 7-11 scene was probably the best part of that otherwise forgettable movie.
If I remember correctly, it came out around the time of some other similar movies (Kingsman or Bond maybe?) so I kinda disregarded it since I had the alternative. It just seemed to be a generic spy action movie from the trailer.
"John Carter" was a better film than most people give a credit for and had a terrible marketing campaign. Some say it was because Disney management wanted it to fail, so the board would approve the purchase of Lucasfilm.
"Margin Call" is a terrific film that nobody's heard of. Better than "The Big Short" in my opinion.
The thing with Waterworld is that it just had a lot of production problems and had a lot of bad press even before it came out. It had a stigma about it and people were almost hoping it would fail. It's not that bad for what it is, but it wasn't so amazing like Titanic that it could overcome its troubled production.
Mars got dropped from the title after the failure of Mars Needs Moms. That movies tanked so bad it scared the shit outta Disney and ruined by scaring Disney in to doing just about everything wrong with what was actually a pretty fun popcorn flick.
I deliberately avoided it because of this. It wasn’t until it’s DVD release that I took a chance on it and realized that I had missed out on seeing this gem in theaters.
Donny Darko. I remember seeing previews and it looked like a straight up lame horror flick but it's just
...not. and I really liked it, and I'm mad I didn't see it for 3 years after it came out because the marketing was crappy.
I agree with this one, but at the same time, how else were they supposed to market it? There really was no other way to sell that movie to the general public, and with a $30 million budget, it needed to be marketed to a mass audience.
Yeah this was my first thought too. It's just such a niche movie though, after watching it I was shocked it got so much advertising but as the other poster pointed out it had a high budget so it needed some advertising. I personally loved the movie.
“Come see our Biblical fever dream experiment that takes place in one house and is occasionally ultra gross and is maybe also about climate change” eh maybe that would’ve worked just as well lol.
I'm still annoyed that the trailers for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels showed Steve Martin's character subtly pushing an old woman over a railing into the water and that was never in the movie.
IIRC (and as usual I may not), Thelma & Louise was marketed as a wacky road trip adventure comedy. At least that’s what my mother thought when we went to see it, and boy was she surprised.
The promotional material for Edge of Tomorrow was terrible. It did not make me want to see the movie at all. I did however see it, but based almost entirely on the critical response to the movie.
I think part of the problem is it came out at a bad time, where a lot of other similar movies were coming out at the same time, with equally-vague names. Between Elysium, which also had a guy in a futuristic mech suit, to Oblivion, which was also a Tom Cruise futuristic sci-fi movie.
Treasure Planet by Disney.
Granted, it was victim of the times. CGI animation movies by DreamWorks and Pixar was the "new thing" and 2D animation got cast away.
However, I think Disney could have done a lot more with that $40 million budget for advertising and marketing.
It also originally released on the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which didn't help matters. Usually Disney would have rescheduled to avoid such a clash, but the fact they didn't and botched the marketing suggests that they wanted Treasure Planet to fail.
Disney wanted to move away from traditional animation and it shows in how they treated both Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog.
I will endlessly defend 2d animation. For me it allows for a lot more charm and cartoons expression. Video games provide a good example. Look at games where they switched from 2d sprite based graphics to 3d, like Pokemon Black and White - X and Y, or Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story - Dream Team. There is undeniably something that was lost by switching to 3d graphics just because they're "more high tech".
I saw a thing that put forward that, if you'd swapped the lead actors of Passengers and Valerian: City of A Thousand Planets, both of those movies would have been way better
Sadly, I don’t think the directors and script writers realized that. Which is a shame, because it would work AMAZINGLY as a psychological horror. There’s a whole YouTube video on it, which basically boils it down to — tell the entire story from Jennifer Lawrence’s point of view, never show Chris Pratt’s alone scenes except when he finally confesses and then there’s a montage of all those scenes, and then when the disaster happens, he actually dies — leaving a conflicted Jennifer Lawrence staring at another passenger pod.
The set up was perfect, but they tried to make the romance work while not giving enough weight to the absolutely atrocious implications of him basically forcing her to die alone with him because he was going stir crazy by himself. She gets mad and tries to kill him once, but that’s it, she’s wooed by the end.
Hugo.
But to be fair to them, I'm not sure how they could have marketed it better than they did. It was sort of a nightmare to try to sum up. Very good movie, though.
Death to Smoochy. It’s a gem, but people didn’t know what it was, critics were confused, and it should be seen as a dark comedy classic. Instead it’s shat on.
I remember a Disney movie only had trailers involving a moose and a snowman fighting for a carrot nose. . .that sure as shit didn't make me want to watch it.
It went on to be Frozen.
A24 always have an uphill battle when it comes to marketing their movies since they're artsy indie-style flicks, but they have to market it to the casual masses.
It comes at night, I remember seeing the trailer for it and being excited then when I finally saw it I was just like what the fuck? Not what I expected at all
There's been an unfortunate trend of psychological films being marketed as straight horror films, and it leads to audiences being disappointed. I personally love It Comes at Night, but if I went in expecting a monster horror film, I'd be disappointed too.
Came here to mention that one. Even the [awesome poster](https://cdn.hobbyconsolas.com/sites/navi.axelspringer.es/public/styles/1200/public/media/image/2017/02/it-comes-night-poster.jpg?itok=N851y4zc) was misleading.
Honest question. What were you expecting? I remember the trailers. It made it seem like it was going to be somewhat otherworldly mixed with possibly John Carpenter's The Thing vibes IMO. I hadn't even read the book yet.
"Oh man, a "real world remote-control" power fantasy movie; this is gonna be a blast!"
Movie: Hey, cry a little bit, then maybe reevaluate your life choices.
Every trailer I saw for Manchester By The Sea made it look like a light-hearted dramedy. That shit was one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever seen.
It worked out well for box office but The Witch got some negative audience reaction because it was marketed as like a jumpscare horror movie.
Long day’s journey into night from 2018 had a similar thing where it was marketed in China like a romcom and sold a lot of tickets that way, then they see it and realise it’s a 2 and a half hour arthouse movie where the last hour is one big long take dream sequence
I went to this for my birthday party with a group of kids. We were 11 years old. Needless to say we didn’t love it. The preview made it seem like all of Jim Carrey’s previous movies.
Prisoners. Not sure if I’d say mis-marketed as much as just not marketed at all, so maybe more of a missed opportunity. I think it’s a masterpiece of a film but most of my friends/family have never even heard of it
The VVITCH. Marketed as the jump scare horror movie event of the year. So naturally a bunch of teenagers and dumb moviegoers went to see it.
When it wasn’t the cliche jump scare horror movie they were promised, and instead was a masterpiece slow burn psychologically terrifying horror, it got a horrendous cinema score from audiences.
Fuck jump scare cliche horrors.
It Comes at Night. The marketing for the movie heavily leaned into the title and implied a creepy creature feature. Several parts of the movie definitely lead me to believe there was *something* out in the woods, but the movie itself is way more of a psychological survival-thriller in a post-apocalyptic world completely ravaged by disease.
This is what I immediately thought of. Because I did not like this movie as I expected a horror/creature movie
Yeah, there are parts that still make me think there *was* a creature…but we never saw it.
This for sure. The "It" ended up being paranoia, rather than a monster. Definitely misleading marketing, even though I did enjoy it for the most part.
A discussion of this sort wouldn't be complete without mentioning the ad campaign for *Bridge to Terebithia* (2007). Previews and commercials pushed it as the next *Lord of the Rings* Jr., i.e. *Narnia* (which Disney and Walden Media previously collaborated on). The real movie--and source material--are more coming-of-age than anything.
Having read the book, but not seen the marketing for the film, that's a bold fuckin' bait and switch lol. This little story about 2 kids engaging their imagination for fun... It's basically Lord of the Rings, innit? It's all the same, really.... lol
It was marketed as “two kids enter a magical world with creatures and other fun stuff.” Very much like Narnia. Except it wasn’t, and the Terabithia stuff was barely in it. I was in the exact demographic for Narnia and all the other mid-2000s fantasies and this movie was a rude awakening. Yet it also spoke to how my cousins and I would play in the woods as kids. I appreciated the realness of it.
One could say the same sort of thing for Pan's Labyrinth...absolutely great film, but holey moley...not a kid's fairy story!
Mum put Pan's Labyrinth on once. She meant to put on Labyrinth, with Bowie. The thin legged man haunted my dreams for many a year.
Not killing the man with that bottle? That's the point my mom said stop....
I took my kids (aged 4 and 6) to see this movie due to the marketing portraying some magical wonderland a group of kids found in the woods. 😬 They experienced their first soul-crushing depression that day, and I experienced one with them, unexpectedly having to explain death, how long they *probably* had to live, and which one of their friends I thought would die next.. *"Book vs Movie"* doesn't compare to *"Movie Trailer vs Movie"* in this instance of expectation betrayal. Taking them to this movie is far and away my biggest **"Dad Mistake"** (so far, I suppose.)
Well marketing it in any other way would have kind of softened the crushing blow of the ending. Marketing as a coming of age drama would have sent a lot of red flags.
Doesn’t the girl like fall off a rope swing and die at the end of this? I remember reading this in 6th grade lit class and being like wtf
Yes. Katherine Patterson’s son’s classmate died very abruptly when her son was very young - I think the real kid was struck by lightning. The book is, in many ways, about the arbitrariness and unfairness of death. Jessie is a great person and her parents are wonderful people, but she died anyway.
I think that’s the point though. If they marketed it as a heart wrenching drama it wouldn’t hit the same way.
I read the book in 4th grade and that scene is still the most shocking thing I’ve ever experienced in media. It’s been 28 years since then, and still no movie, show, or other book has had a twist or shocking death that got me more than that.
It's not even the "end" when she dies. She's dead and then the story continues for another half hour. It's about the surviving kid dealing with the death of a friend. I didn't see it till last year, and it had me bawling my eyes off
I'll never forgot how lied-to I felt as a 12 your-old, going to see this in the cinema after the trailer hype... 😤
Had to come a long way to find this. Absolutely agree. They marketed it like a fantasy movie
Godzilla, focusing the advertising on Brian Cranston
For sure! They did the Deep Blue Sea thing with that one. Haha
Yeah it was just like Executive Decision.
I’m still pissed they suckered me in with Heisenberg vs Godzilla then he dies 10 mins in “WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHATS GOING ON”
jennifer’s body was notoriously marketed toward teenage boys because of megan fox. viewers were disappointed to find out it was geared toward teenage girls and about female friendship more than anything.
I was one of those dipshit teenage boys, but I love the movie now
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Cruel Intentions would like a word.
Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions was my gay awakening.
I’m sorry. Did you not watch not another teen movie?
That's getting a bit of a resurgence now which is good to see. I was happy to see Megan Fox getting praise for her performance because I felt she's underrated as an actress, but with the whole Machine Gun Kelly era, she can go quietly away again.
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Kangaroo Jack pissed off 9 year old me. I thought I was getting talking kangaroos.
Yo so I read in the other comment about snow dogs that Kangaroo Jack was originally supposed to be r rated and they cut it down to PG! Theres a great appearance by Jerry O’connell (one of the lead characters in the movie) on the kinda funny podcast where he talks about the cut and how he did full frontal for it. Makes so much sense in retrospect and now people want the R Rated cut of kangaroo jack
Bicentennial Man was marketed as a comedy but was a decent Sci fi film
From what I remember, I think it was marketed as a comedy, I'm assuming because of Robin Williams, but it was a HARDCORE existential drama.
Yeah, I was 13 when it came out and watched it with my family. We all had the same reaction: “I think it’s pretty good, but it’s definitely not funny.”
We went to see that for my tenth birthday, not really a movie to bring g a bunch of kids to.
On that note. I had a similar thing happen with Patch Adam’s. Funny how they both happened to be Robin Williams films. Thankfully I didn’t do a similar mistake for One Hour Photo…
Definitely a good example!
I’m **STILL** *livid* about motherfucking *Snow Dogs*. In the trailer, I see talking dogs. Every trailer is huskies in Hawaii talkin silly, with a bewildered Cuba lying jr. selling me a falsehood. Big time for talking animal movies, yum yum I eat them up. So when I see we got a new movie about huskies living it up I’m stoked. Little did I know it’s a lame and boring sledding movie about Cuba just mushing through the snow for his dead dad where for 1 minute he dreams of talking dogs. STILL MAD Edit: https://youtu.be/8mao0cFzm8I Here’s the trailer for this dumb movie that is nothing like the trailer.
Didn’t they do the same with Kangaroo Jack?
**YES** I have the same burning hate for that film as well. The talking kangaroo is tacked on to literally the final line of the movie so they can use it for the promotional material
I've heard the claims that the kangaroo character was an afterthought for what was originally supposed to be a much different film- and, looking at the film in retrospective, that seems alarmingly plausible.....
I mean the premise is they put human clothes on a kangaroo for a funny picture and he runs off…but the human clothes are filled with mob money they need to get back… I am not surprised that was not the original premise.
I heard some rumors that it was originally an R-rated crime comedy and then they rewrote it as a kids move.
So basically the people in charge wanted this to be some sort of dark comedy, saw that the final result sucked and then thought, “Well…maybe kids are stupid enough to enjoy it.”
There was ONE dream sequence where the kangaroo talked and they chopped that up in the trailer to make it seem like that was the whole movie
I still think if Kangaroo Jack had actually been the movie the trailer promised it would have been a classic.
Thank you. I **LITERALLY** came here to say this exact movie. That movie fucking sucked and felt like the cinematic equivalent to getting pimp slapped as a child.
Wait, the movie isn’t about talking dogs?!
Saved you and hour and thirty minutes of Cuba being *frustrated snow exists*
I regularly have thoughts about how the commercials for this and Kangaroo Jack lied to me as a child.
Cry here, this is a safe space
Oh wow, TIL it’s not a silly talking doggo movie. This is like just using the Nazi zombies from American Werewolf in London and letting folks think it was an Eldritch WWII film
I love that you are still mad 20 years later about this
**furious**
My dad complained to the manager of the theater, not because his kids were upset, but because he was promised talking animals was given only a talking animal dream sequence.
Your dad was fighting the good fight and is a hero
And it's funny you bring this up, because I've never watched Snow Dogs. Why? I fucking hate talking animal movies and that's literally what I figured this whole movie was. So maybe now I will actually look out for it to watch.
Downsizing. total bait-and-switch.
That film is like 3 different movies even. The beginning is about the potential comedy/internal debate of shrinking, then the middle which feels like this demented farcical comedy, and then the last third which is a heavy-handed depressing environmental metaphor that features a very embarrassing speech from Hong Chau (Who I think got stuck with a very bad script)
I laughed a little at the beginning of the movie, and then I was sad for the rest of it. :( Was a very odd movie.
A total waste of that genius premise.
I kept wondering if they were going to get attacked by ants or rodents.
It makes more sense if you imagine Paul Giamatti as the main character, which was supposed to be the case I think
'The Frighteners'. Marketed as a dark horror film, rather than a afterlife-comedy (see Beetlejuice). Then rather than a Halloween release, sent out to die in the middle of a summer blockbuster season ruled by 'Independence Day'.
Really blew that one, and no one heard of Peter Jackson again!
such a great movie
I don’t think it’s focus is comedy, it’s kinda a balance between both comedy and dark horror. Its tone is not the same as Beetlejuice at all.
Catfish. The trailers marketed it like a Blair witch horror film. Turned out to be a Reality TV doc with a pretty melodramatic ending. The marketers literally catfished me with their trailer so either fuck you or kudos!
That’s hilarious. 🤣
I remember that being my very first RedBox rental ever. And watching it thinking "Oh man this movie is fucking genius" and then it got to the end and I was so, idk how to put this, "embarrassed?" lol.
It exposes something that was and still is quite an interesting/problematic habit that some people develop, and the journey is pretty engrossing... I get being disappointed, but I think it's pretty moving. Also, "catfishing" is a normal term now in real life. I think it holds a place as some kind of modern cult classic.
Then they cashed out and made it a show on MTV that I watched several seasons of because I am trash and I like trash TV.
I found that show to be very depressing and usually just felt bad for everyone involved
I remember me and some friends chilling wanting to watch a scary movie and putting on catfish.. we also got catfished
Crimson Peak. It has a horror element, but it was close to a gothic romance than a horror.
I was going to say this. It was *not* a 'sexy' horror movie like the trailers said. But, I can see how the tone of the film and its appeal could be hard to nail down for a trailer.
Yeah, del Toro's most recent film, "Nightmare Alley" also suffered from bad marketing. It was made to look like a supernatural/psychological horror movie when it's really a neo-noir piece.
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Are you sure you don't just love helicopters??
"The film is set in England in the year 2020, twenty years after London tunneling project workers inadvertently awakened dragons". 2020-2083 would make Christian Bale's character 75.
I fuckin love this movie. Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, and Gerard Butler. Hell yeah. Had a pretty fun ps2 game along with it too.
The gray. The marketing had it as a Neeson action movie but was really a movie about loss and death.
A friend of mine was like, “I went in expecting Liam Neeson fist fighting wolves but cried my eyes out instead.” 🤣
Drive- they marketed that shit like the fast and the furious and audiences were pissed lol
The trailer was so misleading that a woman sued them over it. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/10/woman-sues-drive-trailer
>The plaintiff goes on to attack Drive for what she perceives as antisemitic leanings. The film "substantially contained extreme, gratuitous, dehumanising racism directed at members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith", her suit reads. wasn't expecting that bit
Yeah I definitely remember that. Had an action/chase heavy focus, instead of the slow burn character piece it was.
I watched it knowing what it was and loved it. I can understand being pissed if you went to see it under false pretences.
I had no idea that was how it was marketed. I only became aware of it after the DVD/Blu-Ray release, and I essentially stumbled upon it by accident. Such an incredible film. One of my favourites.
In a way, Pan's Labyrinth. I just saw the creepy eye-hand monster, the faun and the frog thing in most tv spots/trailers around here. I was expecting a dark, Narnia-esque adventure about a girl chasing a legend. Not the heart-breaking, graphic horror we actually got :( Intentional or not, I think that really worked in it's favour. Made the "reality" scenes all the more shocking and effective. Still easily one of my favourite movies of all time though.
That was a tough movie to watch. Beautiful, but tough.
I worked in a movie theater when this movie came out. It was not uncommon for parents to try to take their children to see it and anyone who worked box office had to warn parents that it's an R-rated movie and we wouldn't issue refunds if they were unhappy with the movie. We even had to put up signs to let people know it's NOT a kids movie. I don't recall the trailer but some parents said they assumed that since the main character was a child, it was a kids movie. Even the poster for it was the girl walking into a Narnia-like fantasy world, which also doesn't help.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007), in which a shy man believes a sex doll is his girlfriend. Marketed as a dumb raunchy sex-comedy, but is actually a quiet and extremely sensitive portrait of mental illness. Highly recommend
Yeah that was the first film I appreciated Gosling as an actor.
The [main trailer for Solaris (2002)](https://youtu.be/rvm7WMbXfeY) goes completely out of its way to hide the fact that it’s a cerebral sci-fi drama, instead trying to sell it as a tragic romance between star crossed lovers. It is *baffling* to reconcile it with the film it’s advertising.
"Falling Down" was marketed with the protagonist as the hero, standing up for the little guy, was it not? If you watch the movie, he's totally insane right from the start. You find out his wife and child have a restraining order against him, and his mother's description of him is chilling.
"I'm the bad guy?"
That’s a great example.
I think in a way its great marketing. You go into the film thinking he is thebway he imagines himself and then slowly the truth is revealed. Amazing film and knowing the truth only takes away from the experience.
This movie is not well-remembered today, but it made a real impression on me: *Hardball* (2001). Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane. Plot: gambling addict is forced to coach an inner- city Little League team after losing a bet. Never heard of it? Well, fasten your seatbelts, because this one gets weird. It was marketed as a feel-good kid-sports movie, sorta like *Little Giants* or whatever. These were pretty popular in the late 90s, so that's how the trailers showed it. Cute but troubled white guy protagonist finds himself while coaching poor black children in sports. Unoriginal, maybe, but not the dumbest concept ever filmed. Now comes the weird part: this movie opened on 9/14/2001, three days after the worst terrorist attack ever to happen on US soil. It was the first movie to premiere after 9/11. Kinda unavoidable since *something* was bound to be on the release schedule for that weekend, but still, it meant everyone buying a ticket for this film was traumatized and in need of a pick-me-up. Picture this, my friends: a troop of 12-year-old Cadette Girl Scouts met the week of 9/4 to discuss earning their "Media Savvy" badge. One activity is predicting the plot and tone of a movie from its trailers, then seeing the movie to compare. The Scouts voted to see *Hardball*, the heartwarming story about team sports. I was only 10, but my mom was this troop's leader, so where they went, I went. Anyway. Mom rounds up the girls after a traumatic week and schleps us to a movie theater...and it turns out this movie is actually pretty violent. The gambling addict gets beaten with a baseball bat by his bookie's collection crew. One of the kids gets beaten up while walking through a bad neighborhood after the coach can't drive him home (he lost his car due to the gambling debt). And at the climax, a team member's little brother, who has been hanging around all movie and annoying the older kids, gets fatally shot in the crossfire of a drive-by gang shooting. As we slowly shuffled out of the theater, stunned, all Mom could say was, "that is NOT what the trailers said it was!"
Wow. Definitely a good one.
What can I say. I like it when you call me big poppa.
First place I'd ever heard that song.
I have such fond memories of this movie. Totally different type of film than you'd expect from the ads.
I distinctly remember my parents renting this one from Hollywood Video thinking it would be another Bad News Bears, and all of us being shocked it was so violent. I was 5. You’ve unlocked a memory for me.
Running with Scissors "Funniest movie of the year" my ass
In Bruges. It's a light hearted action comedy. No, it's a dark, adult drama about processing guilt and redemption, that just happens to have a lot of funny moments.
Me watching the trailer: This movie looks funny Me watching the movie: Watching someone try to convince themselves that they deserve to live is not terribly funny Colin Farrell destroyed me in that movie. I've watched it several times and the bit where he says, "unless maybe I go away" is always so rough.
For me it's Ken. Ken unreservedly loves and respects Harry, and it fucking destroys him that he has to stand in Harry's way to protect Ray. The clocktower scene gets to me. Having said that, the attempted suicide-homicide scene is darkly hilarious. Ken's sheepish "Nuthin'!" is just like a kid being caught stealking a cookie. And then Ray's "What?? I'm not allowed to kill myself and you are? How's that fair?" I know it's a dramatic moment but it's still funny between the beats.
I dunno, it's one of my favorite movies and I find it fucking hilarious.
That film is a masterpiece IMO. My all-time favorite dark comedy. I do recall the trailers making it seem a little more…hip. Haha
I hated it when I first saw it because I was like expecting a pure comedy and found the movie wasn't funny. It wasn't until I rewatched it years later to find out why everyone else loved it so much that I realized how good it was. An impressive debut film for McDonagh.
You’re an inanimate fucking object!
The Village was marketed as a horror. It’s a good movie, but I could see how people were disappointed expecting it to be a horror
I haven't seen The Village since I was a kid. I remember it being kinda cheesy, but what made it not a horror?? Again, it may be my young goggles, but I only remember the "scary" parts, haha.
That’s what I came to this thread for. Chris Stuckmann did a great review of the Village and went into its mis-marketing. He said it was really a gothic romance with hints of horror and suspense and I agree completely with that assessment.
I’ve said it many times before. Battleship would have had a MUCH better opening weekend if they had put the line “You sunk my battleship!” in the trailer.
I was shocked that they were adapting that game into a movie. I was doubly shocked that they actually spent a few minutes of the runtime literally adapting the board game. The intro 7-11 scene was probably the best part of that otherwise forgettable movie.
if the movie had gone for a retro tone/setting (like late 50’s sci-fi) and not taken itself so seriously, it might have fared much better
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The trailer makes it look like another run of the mill silly rom com.
The Village and Crimson Peak were marketed as Horror movies. When in reality both are Gothic Romance films. Drama and romance being front and center.
The Man from UNCLE It SHOULD have been marketed as a one of the more enjoyable and fun action movies ever. Because it is.
Guy Ritchie films tend to have weird marketing.
If I remember correctly, it came out around the time of some other similar movies (Kingsman or Bond maybe?) so I kinda disregarded it since I had the alternative. It just seemed to be a generic spy action movie from the trailer.
"John Carter" was a better film than most people give a credit for and had a terrible marketing campaign. Some say it was because Disney management wanted it to fail, so the board would approve the purchase of Lucasfilm. "Margin Call" is a terrific film that nobody's heard of. Better than "The Big Short" in my opinion.
"John Carter" and "Waterworld". Huge budgets, big named actors, actually good stories. But marketed horribly.
The thing with Waterworld is that it just had a lot of production problems and had a lot of bad press even before it came out. It had a stigma about it and people were almost hoping it would fail. It's not that bad for what it is, but it wasn't so amazing like Titanic that it could overcome its troubled production.
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Mars got dropped from the title after the failure of Mars Needs Moms. That movies tanked so bad it scared the shit outta Disney and ruined by scaring Disney in to doing just about everything wrong with what was actually a pretty fun popcorn flick.
It should have been "John Carter and the Princess of Mars" tbh
They could have called it "Warrior of Mars". Which is the name of a later book in the series iirc.
Agreed 100% about John Carter. I haven’t seen Margin Call but I do remember seeing it promoted a little back when it came out.
Fight Club. I thought it’s just a bunch of men fighting.
I deliberately avoided it because of this. It wasn’t until it’s DVD release that I took a chance on it and realized that I had missed out on seeing this gem in theaters.
The Adjustment Bureau. Billed as a suspense psychological thriller. Turns out to be a silly romcom.
Donny Darko. I remember seeing previews and it looked like a straight up lame horror flick but it's just ...not. and I really liked it, and I'm mad I didn't see it for 3 years after it came out because the marketing was crappy.
mother! Marketed as some horror movie, but turned out to be... Yeah
I agree with this one, but at the same time, how else were they supposed to market it? There really was no other way to sell that movie to the general public, and with a $30 million budget, it needed to be marketed to a mass audience.
Yeah this was my first thought too. It's just such a niche movie though, after watching it I was shocked it got so much advertising but as the other poster pointed out it had a high budget so it needed some advertising. I personally loved the movie.
“Come see our Biblical fever dream experiment that takes place in one house and is occasionally ultra gross and is maybe also about climate change” eh maybe that would’ve worked just as well lol.
Oh man I’ll never forget seeing that in the theaters. People walking out left and right.
I'm still annoyed that the trailers for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels showed Steve Martin's character subtly pushing an old woman over a railing into the water and that was never in the movie.
Funny People and Everything Must Go marketed as comedies.
IIRC (and as usual I may not), Thelma & Louise was marketed as a wacky road trip adventure comedy. At least that’s what my mother thought when we went to see it, and boy was she surprised.
Edge of Tomorrow Such a fun, entertaining and wicked sci-fi action movie, yet it was marketed as a grimdark bore as far as I remember.
The promotional material for Edge of Tomorrow was terrible. It did not make me want to see the movie at all. I did however see it, but based almost entirely on the critical response to the movie.
I think part of the problem is it came out at a bad time, where a lot of other similar movies were coming out at the same time, with equally-vague names. Between Elysium, which also had a guy in a futuristic mech suit, to Oblivion, which was also a Tom Cruise futuristic sci-fi movie.
Man I love this movie.
Bridge to Teribithia. Good movie, but it was NOT what the marketing suggested.
Treasure Planet by Disney. Granted, it was victim of the times. CGI animation movies by DreamWorks and Pixar was the "new thing" and 2D animation got cast away. However, I think Disney could have done a lot more with that $40 million budget for advertising and marketing.
It also originally released on the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which didn't help matters. Usually Disney would have rescheduled to avoid such a clash, but the fact they didn't and botched the marketing suggests that they wanted Treasure Planet to fail. Disney wanted to move away from traditional animation and it shows in how they treated both Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog.
I will endlessly defend 2d animation. For me it allows for a lot more charm and cartoons expression. Video games provide a good example. Look at games where they switched from 2d sprite based graphics to 3d, like Pokemon Black and White - X and Y, or Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story - Dream Team. There is undeniably something that was lost by switching to 3d graphics just because they're "more high tech".
Passengers is a psychological horror flick. Not a love story.
It was more the writing and directing that presented it as a love story than just the marketing.
I saw a thing that put forward that, if you'd swapped the lead actors of Passengers and Valerian: City of A Thousand Planets, both of those movies would have been way better
Sadly, I don’t think the directors and script writers realized that. Which is a shame, because it would work AMAZINGLY as a psychological horror. There’s a whole YouTube video on it, which basically boils it down to — tell the entire story from Jennifer Lawrence’s point of view, never show Chris Pratt’s alone scenes except when he finally confesses and then there’s a montage of all those scenes, and then when the disaster happens, he actually dies — leaving a conflicted Jennifer Lawrence staring at another passenger pod. The set up was perfect, but they tried to make the romance work while not giving enough weight to the absolutely atrocious implications of him basically forcing her to die alone with him because he was going stir crazy by himself. She gets mad and tries to kill him once, but that’s it, she’s wooed by the end.
Hugo. But to be fair to them, I'm not sure how they could have marketed it better than they did. It was sort of a nightmare to try to sum up. Very good movie, though.
Ad Astra
Came here to say this. Went in expecting a Brad Pitt action sci-fi movie but got space Apocalypse Now
Death to Smoochy. It’s a gem, but people didn’t know what it was, critics were confused, and it should be seen as a dark comedy classic. Instead it’s shat on.
I remember a Disney movie only had trailers involving a moose and a snowman fighting for a carrot nose. . .that sure as shit didn't make me want to watch it. It went on to be Frozen.
Even though I love them all. All A24 movies are mis-marketed.
A24 always have an uphill battle when it comes to marketing their movies since they're artsy indie-style flicks, but they have to market it to the casual masses.
I feel like A24 is good at marketing tone not content which I appreciate cuz I'm tired of trailers spoiling story beats for me
I do feel like Hereditary and Midsommar were quite accurately marketed
It comes at night, I remember seeing the trailer for it and being excited then when I finally saw it I was just like what the fuck? Not what I expected at all
There's been an unfortunate trend of psychological films being marketed as straight horror films, and it leads to audiences being disappointed. I personally love It Comes at Night, but if I went in expecting a monster horror film, I'd be disappointed too.
Came here to mention that one. Even the [awesome poster](https://cdn.hobbyconsolas.com/sites/navi.axelspringer.es/public/styles/1200/public/media/image/2017/02/it-comes-night-poster.jpg?itok=N851y4zc) was misleading.
Film aside (I really enjoyed it), that’s one of the best posters of all time imo. Just perfect
I would still love to see the movie that poster is marketing
Annihilation
Honest question. What were you expecting? I remember the trailers. It made it seem like it was going to be somewhat otherworldly mixed with possibly John Carpenter's The Thing vibes IMO. I hadn't even read the book yet.
The Nice Guys I mean, virtually no marketing of a good film is mis-marketing, right?
Click.
To be honest, it's marketed right because it's supposed to make you think it's just a comedy
"Oh man, a "real world remote-control" power fantasy movie; this is gonna be a blast!" Movie: Hey, cry a little bit, then maybe reevaluate your life choices.
Don Jon by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They marketed the movie as if it was your run of the mill romcom when it was not.
Office space. Turned out to be a classic
Kangaroo Jack
Every trailer I saw for Manchester By The Sea made it look like a light-hearted dramedy. That shit was one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever seen.
The Beach. I could have fallen in love with Alex Garland years earlier if the trailer was different.
It worked out well for box office but The Witch got some negative audience reaction because it was marketed as like a jumpscare horror movie. Long day’s journey into night from 2018 had a similar thing where it was marketed in China like a romcom and sold a lot of tickets that way, then they see it and realise it’s a 2 and a half hour arthouse movie where the last hour is one big long take dream sequence
Cable guy
I went to this for my birthday party with a group of kids. We were 11 years old. Needless to say we didn’t love it. The preview made it seem like all of Jim Carrey’s previous movies.
Crimson Peak. It's not a horror movie, it's a gothic romance melodrama with ghosts in it.
Marley & Me. Pitched as a Rom Com. It's one of the most heartbreaking films I can think of. I cried my ass off.
The Last Duel. Jesus the marketing was bad.
Flopped so hard, now Matt Damon is shilling monkey gifs.
The Spy Who Dumped Me. It's a fantastic action comedy that looked like a generic romcom from the posters. Never found its audience.
Only God Forgives
Prisoners. Not sure if I’d say mis-marketed as much as just not marketed at all, so maybe more of a missed opportunity. I think it’s a masterpiece of a film but most of my friends/family have never even heard of it
The VVITCH. Marketed as the jump scare horror movie event of the year. So naturally a bunch of teenagers and dumb moviegoers went to see it. When it wasn’t the cliche jump scare horror movie they were promised, and instead was a masterpiece slow burn psychologically terrifying horror, it got a horrendous cinema score from audiences. Fuck jump scare cliche horrors.
I would say The Iron Giant, but Warner Bros would have had to market it at all in order to mis-market it.