6 movie trailers that deceived viewers
A successful movie trailer not only makes you feel the anticipation to see a new flick, but it also gives you key glimpses into the story and characters so that you immediately are sold to watch it.
However, some trailers have deceived audiences by selling an image of a story that does not remain true to the movie.
Here are six movie trailers that managed to deceive audiences. Warning: Spoilers for the following movies.
1. Kangaroo Jack
The trailer for Kangaroo Jack pitched the film as a family friendly comedy with the likes of a talking kangaroo and screaming characters. Many kids watched the flick at the cinemas only to sit through a mafia comedy about adult friendships and failed dreams. The coy marketing ploy led the film to the top of the box office over its opening weekend.
2. Snow Dogs
After watching the trailer, this Disney film appears to look like a story following different talking dog characters. However, apart from the main dog Demon, the canines are not even central to the plot. After watching the film, audiences will realise the clip from the trailer that contains talking is dogs is from a dream sequence in the movie.
3. Drive
One woman sued the distributor of this movie because she believed the trailer was so deceiving. While the trailer makes it appear like a typical blockbuster car-chasing action film, it is actually slow-paced and contains little driving. The film focuses on cinematography, layers of meaning and character development rather than the typical Fast and the Furious story-arc that trailer viewers might have been expecting.
4. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Although Sweeney Todd has been a musical for years, the trailer concealed all of its musical themes. The confused audiences who packed into cinemas to see this movie were taken aback as it strayed from the typical action thriller genre as depicted in the trailer.
5. Passengers
Passengers, starring heavyweight Hollywood actors Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, strayed away from the central plot in the trailer advertising. It appears as if the duo were woken up by accident on their space voyage, however, in the movie Pratt’s character wakes up Lawrence on purpose – effectively killing her. Some audiences were turned off by his moral decision.
6. Collateral Beauty
This movie has a trailer that is understandably not true to the movie story because the story has too many twists to be successfully summarised in a short trailer. Will Smith plays Howard Inlet, a grieving man who struggles to move on in life. He begins to write letters to Death, Time and Love and soon these abstract identities show up to help him heal. Later, viewers discover that Howard’s friends have actually hired actors to play the personifications of Death, Time and Love so that they can film him and prove that he insane in order to take control of his business. However, there is still one more twist that audiences weren’t expecting.
Have you ever been disappointed with a movie because of a misleading trailer? If so, tell us about it in the comments below.