I thought it was a story about child abuse.
From the commercials, Family Business, with Sean Connery and Matthew Broderick, looked like it was a rollicking comedy/“big score” kind of movie. As it turns out, the movie had only about two mildly amusing moments that were already in the commercials, and whatever heist they were pulling off was only a third of the way into the movie, leaving an hour to go of blah blah blah I don’t remember what. Ruined a good date for me.
The Book of Eli
The revelation of his blindness was supposed to be a huge twist. But from the trailers, I thought it was about some kick ass blind guy, because he was the only one (in the trailers) wearing dark glasses. Also, I hate movies with a message especially religious messages. I don’t mind that it was a Bible, but the whole thing about the Bible being the reason he was a kick ass blind guy was a little too much.
The trailers for “Hart’s War” made it seem an actiony WWII drama.
It wasn’t.
Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams looked like a comedy to me. It really wasn’t.
The trailers for Top Gun gave no indication of the blatently homoerotic movie it turned out to be.
Gayest movie ever!
That is *exactly *how my wife describes that movie. She still blames me because it was my idea to go see the movie that day.
And, like a few others have commented, we’d never even heard of the book before we saw the movie… and we both read a LOT of books.
Most. Misleading. Trailer. EVAR.
Yeah. Saw it while on a cruise in Europe, looking for a nice, happy fluff movie to complement our nice, happy vacation.
I thought it was sad, but it really got to my husband. He wept.
A lot of people were misled by the trailers, including me. Fortunately I like Kill Bill about a thousand times more than Superbad so it was a very pleasant surprise. I adore Kick-Ass. But it had seriously terrible marketing, designed to make every twelve year old in the country want to see it. If I were a parent who took my kid to see that film, I would be pissed.
I did consider watching that with my 11-year-daughter, but fortunately over here it was a 15 and that’s not at the parents’ discretion (at the cinema), so lots of people had already seen it and were able to tell me what it was really like. I still haven’t seen it myself, though I’d like to.
This is the Kick-Ass trailer I saw on television.
Here’s a redband Hit-Girl trailer that more accurately shows film content.
See what I mean?
Though I gotta admit, not knowing about Hit-Girl in advance made her 10x more awesome in theater. That movie was the best surprise in a long time. It’s on my Top-Ten List.
I also have a feeling if it were marketed properly Ebert might not have been such a giant tool about his review (he gave it bad review simply on the ‘‘won’t someone think of the children?’’ principle, refusing to even objectively consider its artistic merit because it featured kids witnessing and committing acts of violence.)
My mother and my grandmother both went to see it. They loved it, but they didn’t like the little girl using foul language. No shit. All the people she brutally and graphically slaughtered, no problem, but they just didn’t like to hear the language coming out of that little girl’s mouth.
I didn’t know it was a book until this thread. I didn’t realize there were people alive in English-speaking countries who hadn’t heard of Pratchett and Heinlein.
We’d never heard of BtT before seeing the movie, and like many in this thread, we were expecting some sort of Narnia knockoff.
However, we were pleased with the movie we saw and it has since become a family favorite, especially when the girls (8 year-old Sophie and mom) want a good cry.
To be fair, she didn’t *actually *kill all those people. I think.
[spoiler]Well yeah, it was a kid for most of the movie, so it wasn’t like she could reject it by driving it away to annoy the villagers.
But the rest of Frankenstein is there - unwisely creating a creature, being disappointed in it, pushing it away, it eventually gets revenge by killing off the creator’s loved ones. All it’s missing is the boring part about a ship trapped in ice.[/spoiler]
Wow, I guess the book was only popular when I was a kid. It came out the year I was born, and tons of my classmates and I read it around 5th or 6th grade. I guess it faded away after that. How about Tuck Everlasting, do kids still read that? I’m guessing not, considering they don’t seem to realize how much twilight ripped it off.
According to this site, she only kills 40 out of the 62 people blown away in the movie. Not too shabby.
I thought Coraline would be a movie a lot like The Nightmare Before Christmas. After all, it’s Tim Burton! It’s stop motion! It’s got a small child as the protagonist. What could go wrong?
It’s seriously messed up, that’s what! It’s psychologically intense and some characters are outright horrifying. The villainess creeped me out during the opening credits. The constant button eyes were haunting. I would never let small children watch this movie!
Well, that was their argument. ‘‘The killing was just pretend, but she was really swearing.’’ Okay, well, I don’t really get that bent out of shape about swearing, but I guess they have a point.
The Fifth Element. The trailer billed it as “Star Wars for the '90s.”
Tim Burton had fuckall to do with it. The movie was made by Henry Selick, who was indeed the director of the Nightmare Before Christmas. (See? It’s marketed as ‘by the director of’ and everyone thinks ‘Burton!’
As for the scaryness, I think Neil Gaiman says it best: