Gotta disagree about Fight Club. Trailer made it look like it was going to be some low rent, dumb Bloodsport-esque film about bunches of guys beating each other senseless with lashing and lashings of blood. Turns out the film is a satire about modern society, and a very clever, well directed, well acted one at that.
Didn’t see the film for about a year because of it, and the choruses of friends saying “well I told you so” was deafening afterwards.
I can’t believe I’m confessing that I saw this film, but …
Stepmom
Trailer: Wacky blended family comedy!
Movie: The second half of the film is in essence one big prolonged death bed scene.
Traffic. Half the scenes in this trailer were not in the movie.
Trailer: A group of cops and the government try to stop a huge shipment of cocaine from coming into the U.S., with some mean social commentary thrown in.
Movie: Two and a half hours of Soderbergh whining about how the war on drugs is a sham. With every single retarded action movie cliche thrown in. “Room service. I got breakfast!” Please.
MaxTheVool, I don’t know what Cast Away trailer you saw, but all the trailers that aired in the theater told you he got home.
Actually, Roger Ebert wrote a specific article about this movie trailer. He has felt(and I agree) that studios are getting better at making trailers and worse at making movies. His complaint about the Cast Away trailer is that it does tell you he got home.
I remember in the trailer where Tom Hanks is talking after he gets back and his friend says, “We had a funeral”
And Tom says, “What was in the casket?”
I haven’t seen the movie, but I remember that.
From what I saw from the trailers of Cast Away, it looked like around half of the movie was about the island, and around the other half was Tom Hanks back home, trying to readjust to normal life.
Oh, and vandal, the Thirteen Ghosts trailer you mention is actually quoting from the Motion Picture Association of America (they’re starting to put content warnings under their ratings logo now). I looked up the film in their filmratings.com database, and it states that the MPAA rated Thirteen Ghosts R® for, and I quote, “horror violence and gore, nudity, and some language.”
My own recollection of Legends of the Fall, to which my girlfriend forced me to go, was of a 120-second long action scene, shot on a midnight-blue styrofoam set with not more than twenty extras, with the flash-powder explosions actually reflecting off the backdrops.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that movie had “girl” pasted all over it from trailer to credits.
Amadeus
Trailer: A fantastically stupid looking period piece about a bunch of royal people gossiping over a murder
Reality: An excellent historical fiction about Mozart that is both moving and funny.
Now that it’s been mentioned, I remember being rather suprised when I saw Small Time Crooks.
And while I don’t really recall how long each section was, the only part of Cast Away that held any promise was the survival alone portion. If they wanted to make a Rip van Winkle film, they should’ve only done that. On the whole, I found the entire movie fairly pointless anyway.
Another movie I recall was Hudson Hawk
I didn’t see the trailer per se, but the ad campaign was : Exciting action-thriller about super-theives starring Mr. Action himself, Bruce Willis!
The movie, however, was a completely farcical comic book. I actually liked it a lot (except for the singing), but the majority of people felt disgusted at being betrayed.
This disparity led to a funny moment later when my German teacher, newly arrived from Switzerland, had cut out pictures to try to demonstrate how language & visual imagery works. One of them was a poster-style ad for this movie. It was mostly black, with the all-in-black shadowy figure of Bruce Willis at the bottom, and in large type at the top “Catch the Hawk”. My poor teacher was asking the question, “Now based on this picture, what sort of movie do you think Catch the Hawk is?” and I had to tell her what the movie really was like, but she continued anyway, just noting, “Pretend this is some other movie. What do you think it would be like.”
If I was a producer, I’d make sure that every Shannon Elizabeth movie for the rest of time is advertised with some slant towards nudity. It’s be interesting to see how many times people feel for it. (Twice so far! Tomcats and 13 Ghosts)
Coyote Ugly
Trailer: Attractive women who dance on a bar and get pissed off if you order anything without alcohol in it. Total guy movie.
(Maxim magazine even featured the women on its cover)
Movie: basically the trailer, followed by the cookie-cutter “chick flick”.
…Although I haven’t actually seen the movie. The original trailer I saw (the teaser about a year before the movie came out) emphasized the ship tossing and turning in the sea and made it look like an action/epic type thing with lots of Big Important Characters and Exciting Stuff.
Then when it came closer to the time the movie was actually released, they started showing DeCrapio’s chubby face in the trailers and it became obvious it was some kind of love story (and oh yeah, the ship sinks too.) Blah, nothanks! 
I accidentally watched about five minutes of the movie while flipping channels once, but I turned it off when I realized what it was, and I have vowed to be the last person on earth who has not viewed this movie.
Someone mentioned Falling Down; I don’t remember the trailer for that one, but I do remember really enjoying the movie itself.
I don’t get to see many trailers anyway, because I seldom watch television and usually go to movies based on Ebert’s reviews and the recommendation of my SO. (Who is the best person in the world at knowing which movies are good and which one stink. 
)
Yeah, I got the exact same impression from the Fight Club trailer. And you’re right, that impression is dead wrong.
I really hate it when the studio execs figure that they have to market to a particular niche, even when they have to grossly distort the movie through the trailer. And they’ll often run several downright contradictory trailers simultaneously.
The only example I can think of right now is Arachnophobia. By the time it was being released John Goodman had become a much bigger star than when they made it, so they made up one ad that seemed to feature all of his scenes run together. Goodman was actually a very minor (if quirky) character in the film, so if you saw the trailer you saw all of his stuff.
I know it’s off-topic, but I had to mention it: The trailer for the 1970s flick Cops and Robbers gave the entire story away, right down to the ending. It was like watching the Cliff’s notes version of the film. If you saw the trailer, there wasn’t any point in seeing the movie.
Scream starring Drew Barrymore.
Drew Barrymore dies within five minutes.
You’re going to have to fight my wife for that honor. Her rationale was that she knows how it ends.
Spoiler
The boat sinks.
Alright, so it wasn’t a spoiler.
rjung, that quote is from Roger Ebert, my favorite film critic. (If Roger likes it, I usually do too.) He has a nice sense of humor; check out his Movie Answer Man column on the Chicago SunTimes web page.
Agreeing with rjung and Rocketeer:
There have been times when I’m sitting in the movie theater, waiting for the main show and realizing that I have to sit through about 10 minutes’ worth of previews (What are we up to, 5 now??) and commercials(!) first.
Two things usually occur (and let me know if I’m the only one who experiences these phenomenon):
So I turn to whoever I’m sitting with and rather quietly (as the silence and big then small credits appear on the screen) say “Well, now we don’t have to spend money to go see THAT movie.”
It’s like reading the Reader’s Digest version of the book before actually going out, buying the book and getting involved in the story. But there’s NO POINT gettoing involved in the story, because you know eveything that’s going to happen and you end up sitting in a dark room with a bunch of other people waiting for the lines you already know are coming, the jokes you’ve already laughed at in scenes that you have already seen!
-probably why they’re not called “teasers” anymore.
I forgot what I came to this theatre to see.
I have to wait it out for a few seconds until the soundtrack kicks in with the refrain of whatever musical overture starts the story off and I hunt through the opening credits until I see a name I recognize and only then do I remember the original purpose of my being in this seat.
The trailer’s have gained something and lost something in their evolution, IMHO. They gained the attention of the audience, but they lost their raison d’etre: To intice you to come back to this theatre in 2 weeks/2 months/christmas/a-year-and-a-half from now (!!!) and pay money to see this movie!
Am I the only one?
One of my friends got The Graduate on DVD, and one of the special features was the theatrical trailer for the film. It gave everything away, from “Plastics” to “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me” to “ELAINE! ELAINE! ELAINE!” I can hardly believe anyone went to see the movie back in the day, as the trailer contains every major plot point.
Darqangelle, same here. When the trailer gives away the whole darned movie, I don’t need to see it.
Sometimes a “completist” trailer does you a service, though: for instance, it was obvious that “This Boy’s Life” consisted of two people standing in the kitchen yelling at each other. I figure I don’t need that aggravation.
The best trailers are the enigmatic ones; just enough of the movie to set up the situation…
Second you on that one. I even had a friend spoil it for me because I said “It’s not my kind of movie, I’ll never see it anyway.” Maybe a year later I rented it at the behest of another friend and it blew my mind. Definitely one of my favorite movies. I also really like Chuck Palahniuk’s books (check out Survivor sometime).