# Misleading Movie Trailers
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 30, 2001, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560 "2001-10-30T17:50:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/1 "2001-10-30T17:50:13Z")
We’ve all seen movie trailers on television or before another movie starts. It isn’t all that uncommon for me to decide to see a movie based on what the content of the trailer is. But I’ve noticed that a lot of times the trailer makes the movie out to be something that it is not.
**Falling Down**
Trailer: This was about a normal guy who finally gets sick of the world and fights back.
Movie: This guy was mentally unbalanced to begin with and it was in no way a normal guy going over the edge.
**Bicentennial Man**
Trailer: A comedy starring Robin Willians as a robot who tries to become human.
Movie: A _drama_ starring Robin Willians as a robot who tries to become human.
**Legend of the Falls**
Trailer: Chick flick
Movie: It has Tommy Guns and action scenes from WWI, WOW!
**Tomcats**
Trailer: Hey, it is a stupid comedy but at least you get to see boobs.
Movie: Hey, it **is** a stupid comedy and you don’t even get to see boobs.
**A.I.**
Trailer: For some reason I thought this film would be a little more action oriented. Heck, from some trailers I thought Gigilo Joe was some sort of evil android mastermind plotting against humanity.
Movie: Very little action but at least the movie was still ok.
Anyone else notice differences between trailers and movies? I don’t expect the trailer to give away the whole movie but I at least expect them to give a better representation of what the movie is.
Marc
PS: Yeah I saw Tomcats, what of it?
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### Author:  [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/2 "2001-10-30T18:15:13Z")
Hey, I was just going to start this thread.
The main one I had in mind was **East is East**
Trailer : A broad comedy about two Pakistani sons who wish to defy their father’s wishes for arranged marriage.
Movie: A very funny film but with a lot of dramatic elements – the arranged marriage is only a minor part of a more complex story.
It also seems common to have two versions that make the film seem completely different. This is strangest when one trailer seems to replace another. So, for 6 months you have expectations of a comedy, only to find out 3 weeks before that it might be a romance with almost no comedy.
I think _The Patriot_ had something like this – one trailer about a man dedicated to his family & his wife’s sister, another with computer-generated cannonballs blowing off legs and American flags waving all around.
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### Author:  [@lolagranola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lolagranola)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/3 "2001-10-30T18:41:29Z")
**Nurse Betty**. I think I got the impression that it was a comedy full of wacky hijinks (hence my reluctance to see it), but it wound up being much darker than I expected.
Let me second **Bicentennial Man** as well. Again, I was expecting a comedy, and didn’t find one.
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/4 "2001-10-30T18:46:36Z")
1. **Truman Show** - Hey, another Jim Carrey comedy about a guy stuck in a TV world.
Reality? A Jim Carrey drama.
1. **The Matrix** Mysterious movie. What is the Matrix? Can you figure it out?
Reality? They tell you what the Matrix is about 35 minutes in.
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### Author:  [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/5 "2001-10-30T19:17:48Z")
**Buckaroo Banzai**
Trailer: Action SF movie
Reality: Comic book disguised as a movie.
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### Author:  [@Why\_A\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_A_Duck)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/6 "2001-10-30T19:25:10Z")
And how can we forget **My Girl**?
Trailer: A sweet romantic vehicle for Macauly Culkin.
Reality: He dies halfway through it.
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### Author:  [@J248974](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J248974)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/7 "2001-10-30T19:25:42Z")
They started doing those edited movie trailers some time back and they really irritate me because sometimes, they show all of the good scenes in the movie, and when you get to the show, its disappointing to discover that those scenes were all there was and the rest of the movie is crap.
They cut and edit those things to make it look like unrelated scenes are interlinked, and funnier. Like in ‘Tornado,’ Helen Hunt, in her boyfriends truck, after her own truck gets swept up by the tornado, asks ‘where’s my truck?’ and then watches it crash down in front of her, The scene is funny, but in the movie the scenes are unrelated.
The movie industry seems to do what it wants in advertising with no regard to us. Like the new movie title listings where they blend the name into everything else and you have to search to find it. They used to predominately show the name until some bright boy figured the ‘new’ way is cooler and switched to that.
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### Author:  [@Tommy\_the\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tommy_the_Cat)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/8 "2001-10-30T19:37:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by J248974 \*
> **Like in ‘Tornado,’ Helen Hunt…**
It was “Twister.” Sorry for the nitpick.
They did the same thing with “Major League.” The ads had Tom Berenger saying to Charlie Sheen “That ball wouldn’t have been out of some parks.”
Sheen says “Name one.”
To which Berenger replies “Yellowstone.”
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### Author:  [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/9 "2001-10-30T19:42:09Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by J248974 \*
> \*\*
> They cut and edit those things to make it look like unrelated scenes are interlinked, and funnier. Like in ‘Tornado,’ Helen Hunt, in her boyfriends truck, after her own truck gets swept up by the tornado, asks ‘where’s my truck?’ and then watches it crash down in front of her, The scene is funny, but in the movie the scenes are unrelated.
> \*\*
Excellent point. Another example is **Men In Black** in which the trailer contains a hilarious exchange something like this:
Woman: You guys are part of some goverment cover up organization of some sort
Will Smith: Naw, it’s not like that
(I’m forgetting the details). Anyhow, it was much funnier than the movie, where those two lines were part of separate conversations.
My votes for movie with a deceptive trailer:
**Fools Rush In**
Trailer: A fun and lighthearted romantic comedy with Salma Hayek and Matthew Perry
Movie: A moderately serious, and moderately good, drama about cross-cultural romance and parenting, with a few comedic elements
**Remember the Titans**
One Trailer: A typical sports movie with Denzel trying to make a team win
Another Trailer: A light family-friendly comedy
Movie (at least, what I understand from reading several reviews): All about racism
**Castaway**
spoilers
spoilers
spoilers
spoilers
Most of Trailer: A movie in which you’ll wonder whether he gets off the Island
One little bit of Trailer: He gets off the island
Movie: A movie which you wish you hadn’t seen the trailer for
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### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/10 "2001-10-30T19:44:52Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by J248974 \*
> The movie industry seems to do what it wants in advertising with no regard to us.
I forgot who said it, but someone once said, “Trailers are the movies that the studio _wish_ the director had made.”
Explains it all, IMO.
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### Author:  [@nth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nth)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/11 "2001-10-30T19:55:56Z")
american pie
they had scenes in the trailers that did not make it into the movie.
sucks!
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### Author:  [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/12 "2001-10-30T22:22:31Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Mahaloth \*
> \*\*2. **The Matrix** Mysterious movie. What is the Matrix? Can you figure it out?
> Reality? They tell you what the Matrix is about 35 minutes in. \*\*
And continue telling you for the next 35 minutes (face it, The Matrix suffers from expository bloat). However, since I don’t like being teased about such mysteries, I rather appreciated the early revelation. And while the solution to the mystery is actually fairly mundane (in SF circles, anyway), it still comes off as a surprise because A) it could’ve been anything, and the trailer didn’t spoil it, and B) the fact that the revelation came so early _was_ a surprise.
I’d like to add that some trailers deserve praise for communicating exactly what a movie is, even when it’s hard to boil down (and harder to do without spoiling anything). **Fight Club** is a good example: what the hell is it? Hard to say, but the trailer conveyed it pretty well. Ditto **Being John Malkovich**.
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/13 "2001-10-30T22:25:06Z")
I have a feeling that they’re going out of their way to misrepresent what the movie is all about. Perhaps they’re hoping to draw a bigger crowd for opening weekend or something.
Marc
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### Author:  [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2001, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/14 "2001-10-30T23:30:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by panamajack \*
> \*\*It also seems common to have two versions that make the film seem completely different. This is strangest when one trailer seems to replace another. So, for 6 months you have expectations of a comedy, only to find out 3 weeks before that it might be a romance with almost no comedy.
>
> I think _The Patriot_ had something like this – one trailer about a man dedicated to his family & his wife’s sister, another with computer-generated cannonballs blowing off legs and American flags waving all around. \*\*
Watch carefully to see _when_ they show each of these trailers. Many movies have a “chick” trailer (i.e. the dedicated family one for The Patriot) and another “guy” trailer (i.e. legs blowing off). Since I watch a lot of soap operas and a lot of golf tournaments, I often see both trailers. For instance, during soap operas, _Pearl Harbor_ was advertised as an epic love story; during sports it was advertised as an intense war movie. Probably the funniest ever was _Armageddon_ – unless you watch T.V. geared toward women, you probably didn’t see the ads which made this movie look like a love story. In fact, I almost went to see it until I saw the other ads, which showed it as the violent action flick it was.
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### Author:  [@Swede\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swede_Hollow)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/15 "2001-10-31T01:42:30Z")
Another one from **Major League** that didn’t make it into the film. **Tom Berringer** (sp?) is laying on a bed and talking on the phone saying something like “Hey, you were with me last night. Who’s this chick on top of me?” I was trying to figure out how they would work that into the movie since he was so forlorn over his girlfriend that left him years before and was now trying to get back together with.
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### Author:  [@vandal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandal)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/16 "2001-10-31T02:08:13Z")
**13 Ghosts**
It’s billed as having _nudity_, _profanity_, _gore_, _violence_, etc. (It actually says these things in the trailer). However, the only nudity comes from one of the ghosts, who is all cut up and bloody! That shouldn’t even count as nudity. There’s profanity, but barely any. Misleading? Most definitely.
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### Author:  [@Mighty\_Maximino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Maximino)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/17 "2001-10-31T02:19:56Z")
Occasionally, the trailer makes the movie look atrocious, and that ends up not being the case. After seeing the promo for **Three Kings** I ended up with the impression that it was some kind of George Clooney vehicle composed of pop music and funky camera shots. It turned out to be one of the better movies of the year (and that was a good year, too.)
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### Author:  [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/18 "2001-10-31T02:27:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by J248974 \*
> They started doing those edited movie trailers some time back and they really irritate me because sometimes, they show all of the good scenes in the movie, and when you get to the show, its disappointing to discover that those scenes were all there was and the rest of the movie is crap.
I’m going way back, but as a kid, I saw the trailer for **Mr. Mom.** The trailer was so funny that my parents took all of us kids to see the movie on opening night.
What a disappointment! _Every_ funny scene was in the trailer. The whole rest of the movie was just filler for these scenes.
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### Author:  [@Crunchy\_Frog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crunchy_Frog)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/19 "2001-10-31T02:59:17Z")
**Small Time Crooks**
Trailer: Woody Allen and some misfit friends plan a heist.
Movie: The heist bit lasts all of 15 minutes, the rest of the movie is Woody whining about how much more fun being poor was. :rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shrew)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2001, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misleading-movie-trailers/90560/20 "2001-10-31T04:38:12Z")
**Hanging Up**.
Trailer: comedy full of sisterly mayhem with Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan, and Lisa Kudrow
Movie: horribly sad drama that left me searching through my shelves for a comedy to cheer me up
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