Most misleading movie trailer?

[MKTerra]

With nods to Shellhead :)

I remember the trailer for Stealth didn't hint at
the plane standing down on its own well before the end. OTOH, while a pure dogfight to the finish would've been pretty cool, what they did in the movie was good too :)

[Cotton]

They messed up the story for Iron Monkey in the previews.

Edit: They made it seem as if it were a "Who is Iron Monkey?" mystery rather than just a Robin Hood story set in 19th Century China.

[DonC]

The Phantom was marketed as more of a superhero film than an adventure story.

[Chiasm]

Serenity

Unless you were familiar with Firefly (I wasn't at the time) you got the impression that River was a completely new character. My reaction to the trailer was "ninja chick in space" and I was utterly turned off because it seemed very corny. Fortunately an afternoon came when my kids were on visitation, I was bored, and I gave the movie a chance simply because I'm a big Buffy fan. The movie was nothing like the trailer made it seem. And afterwards I picked up the Firefly series and to my utter surprise learned that River was not a new character as I had thought.

To me the trailers were part of the reason Serenity didn't do well at the box office. Existing fans were probably pumped at seeing River kick some ass. But newbies like me were turned off and I was probably the exception in that I saw it anyway.

[Buzz Dixon]

STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE and STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES both promised to be entertaining prequels to the original STAR WARS.

[EZMOHR]

STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE and STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES both promised to be entertaining prequels to the original STAR WARS.


So did Revenge of Sith. All we got was NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! And Anakin with a mullett.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The Phantom Menace -- The trailer gave the impression that the movie would be a fast-paced and fun-filled roller coster ride in the style of the original films when it was actually a slow moving, exposition-filled go-kart ride with stiff, overly-serious characters. A more appropriate trailer might have lowered my expectations a bit so I wouldn't have been so disappointed when I actually saw the movie.

Granted, we did get fair warning about Jar Jar Binks in that trailer though...

[Lord of Denial]

Highlander Endgame wins hands down!

Every scene in the trailer was not in the final movie. It was reported that they shot scenes just for the trailer that in no way would ever be in the film to get people excited about the movie.

[ChrisIII]

Which AOTC trailer, though? There were four- "Breathing" which was the one with the brief clips and the Vader breathing, "Mystery" which was the exclusive internet/TPM DVD teaser (and focused on the Padme assassination plot) "Forbidden Love" (Which dealt with the romance and Anakin's frustration) and finally "Clone War" (Which dealt chiefly with the Clones and the battle at the end of the film) .

"Forbidden Love" was pretty close to what we got-the cheesy romance and whiny Anakin. The other trailers could be considered a little misleading ,though...


Anyway, wasn't there an attempt to sell MURIEL's WEDDING as an up-beat romantic comedy with Abba songs when it's actually a fairly depressing movie about a delusional pathological liar...with Abba songs?

[nervmeister]

Ang Lee's "The Hulk". From the trailers you kind of expected the movie to be mostly be one big grand tour of destruction with some inner drama on the side. But instead, it was mostly a dramatic exploration of Bruce Banner's persona and psyche with a little smash on the side. Not that this is a bad thing, but a lot of hardcore action fans must've been put off by this once they saw the film.

[Buzz Dixon]

Highlander Endgame wins hands down!

Every scene in the trailer was not in the final movie. It was reported that they shot scenes just for the trailer that in no way would ever be in the film to get people excited about the movie.
The Belushi/Ackroyd film NEIGHBORS had a trailer made of alternate takes and angles from the actual scenes in the movie. All the scenes were there, but they didn't synch up with the trailer version.

Also, sometimes scenes wind up in the trailer but get cut out of the final film: "Scream for your life, Ann!" made it into the trailer for Jackson's KING KONG but was trimmed from the final cut of the movie.

The worst offender re misleading trailers was doubtlessly Roger Corman in his Concord days. They would regularly splice in action scenes that had nothing to do with the movie they were advertising, most notably an exploding helicopter that appeared in several trailers without actually appearing in any of the films themselves!

Directors regularly shoot "trailer takes" for the inclusion of a dramatic shot in the trailer. The scene in DIE HARD where Bruce Willis figures out they must be foreign terrorists 'cuz they smoke dem foreign cigarettes is capped by a swift move in on Bruce as he turns to face the camera -- a completely unmotivated camera move in the film, but a zinger in the trailer!

[Jared]

Cry Wolf's trailer made it look like a second-rate teen slasher flick when in fact it was a second-rate teen psychological thriller. Worse yet, I recall no indication that Jon Bon Jovi was in it.

[Chiasm]

This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9ufqCoqyo)

You think its going to be a nice family flick but its tricksy.

[BigJayStudd]

So did Revenge of Sith. All we got was NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! And Anakin with a mullett.

Anakin: "Nute Gunray?"

Nute: "Yes?"

Anakin: "Install the hyperdrive in my Camaro."

[Tish-the-Scorpion]

angel eyes it was marketed like some vague supernatural thriller.

the mummy they made it seem like it was a horror film,not a action/adventure/comedy.

[Nate Grey]

Highlander Endgame wins hands down!

Every scene in the trailer was not in the final movie. It was reported that they shot scenes just for the trailer that in no way would ever be in the film to get people excited about the movie.

Dang, I was going to post this exact same thing. Other trailers may be misleading, but until they MAKE FOOTAGE JUST FOR THE TRAILER to trick people, Highlander: Endgame will always be the king of misleading trailers.

[ChrisIII]

One thing I've noticed with a lot of the Star Trek movie trailers is that they used stock footage from the other films as well as the TV shows quite a bit, presumabely because the 'fx weren't finished (Some of the films, interestingly enough, use stock footage-A good chunk of STAR TREK II's FX are recycled from TMP). Doesn't Voyager show up in one of the FIRST CONTACT trailers? Plus, what's Kelsey Grammer's ship doing in GENERATIONS?


Deleted scenes in teasers are quite common, as Buzz said-There are some LOTR scenes in the trailers that weren't shown in either versions of the films. Plus Aragorn's speech in the ROTK trailer is apparentally a different take.

[Lord of Denial]

Dang, I was going to post this exact same thing. Other trailers may be misleading, but until they MAKE FOOTAGE JUST FOR THE TRAILER to trick people, Highlander: Endgame will always be the king of misleading trailers.



I could not believe that they would be so clearly misleading. To have deleted scenes in the trailer is one thing but to produce a trailer using scenes that where shot JUST for the trailer and not have a single scene of the real movie is to me fraud.

[Quarterwolf]

Well I did notice that the trailer for "Bring it On" had alot more of the Clovers squad of Cheerleaders outside of what was in the movie. I for one would have loved to see what could have been done had they also followed there storyline.

Still it was a great movie. I just expected to see more of the other group based on the Trailer.

[Buzz Dixon]

I could not believe that they would be so clearly misleading. To have deleted scenes in the trailer is one thing but to produce a trailer using scenes that where shot JUST for the trailer and not have a single scene of the real movie is to me fraud.
I can't remember the title of the particular film, but years ago I saw a horror film advertised on TV with a spooky scene of a night watchman at a graveyard being pulled into a grave by zombie hands. So I went expecting a zombie movie and instead got a particularly dumb teenage slasher flick, with nary a zombie of night watchman in sight (there was a graveyward, but it was a daylight scene and just served as a backdrop for expository dialog).

And this was a really dumb slasher flick -- the killer disguised himself by putting white make-up on his face, which did nothing to disguise him to the audience, yet nobody in the film could recognize him.

[tricksterpup]

The trailers on this movie made it look like a film on Sexual harrasment and it wasn't. I didn't want to watch this movie at the theater, I thought that was bull hocky. Then I saw it on tape.. damn, the trailers made me think it was one thing and not what the movie was about.

[marshal99]

This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9ufqCoqyo)

You think its going to be a nice family flick but its tricksy.

There's a few of these running about , the music and editing can really change the mood of the trailer.

Check out the titanic horror movie trailer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=c9mrz4BJop8

and the brokeback to the future trailer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY

The trailer for the japanese movie "Suicide club" makes it out to be like a japanese ghost movie with scarily long hair just appearing and coming out from the fax machine when that scene never actually appeared in the movie.