im pretty much a major-league hollywood hater and non-movie goer. i am seriously disappointed with about 99% of all the crap i do see when my wife makes me watch it when it comes to sattlelight dish (and don’t get me started on THAT!).
i see a trailer on tv and decide RIGHT THEN that i will not pay to see that movie! recent examples:
corky romano- no f&%$#n’ way!
the bubble boy movie- see above
freddie got fingered- saw the funny “sausage song/keyboard” gag, so i dont need to see the rest!
some movie about racing across country- see above, again!
any movie where the laws of gravity are revoked makes my shit list…
others…
traffic-- what a piece of shit this was! it got such good reviews… what the fah…?
legends of the fall-- heard it was a chick flick, but i didn’t HATE it, it was okay…
titanic-- pretty bad story, but i dug the ship sinking parts
blair witch ripoff-- i still can’t talk about this without getting angry…
One thing to add, on the fantastic DVD there are some ‘internet trailers’ that I feel convey the spirit of the film flawlessly, and would have made me stand in line to see it. Instead I avoided it…
“Hmm… Brad Pitt and Edward Norton fighing and showering together. Not interested [sub]not that there is anything wrong with that[/sub].”
Some things to remember, except for some very powerful very interested directors, the maker of the movie generally has very little to do with the ads (Kubrick was always very involved in the marketing campaign). William Goldman’s view is that a studio marketing department’s position is that all movies suck and they are the last chance for the studio to make even a penny in revenue.
Whatever it takes to get a butt in the seat is what they’ll do. They don’t care how many people are watching it after a month, just how many people are watching it the Saturday after it opens.
Absolute worst trailer: Seven Samurai.
Get yourself the Criterion Collection version of the DVD and watch the trailer. It starts something like this (spoiler, I guess):
“Seven samurai came to defend a village from grain stealing vagabonds, five of them died in the effort.”
It literally told the entire story. If only Kurosawa had realized the movie need only be 5 minutes long.
Totally agree with the OP on this one. When I went to see this flick in the theater, I clearly recall looking forward to rooting for this “ordinary guy” (who of course turned out to be one scary nutcase).
The second preview for Star Wars:Episode 1:The Phantom Menace
Trailer: A kick-ass sci-fi action adventure movie.
Reality: A kick-ass light sabre fight and uh…um…uhh…something else must have happened to fill 2 hours… we waited 16 years for that?!?!