Well, if it does go forward, maybe they’ll include the ploy where they make a film look like a lighthearted comedy in the trailer, but in reality the film is a depressing heavy drama. That must qualify as false advertising, too.
Actually didn’t the makers of the tornado chasers movie twister get in trouble or some heat because they had a scene of something going through a glass window for a jump scare that wasn’t in the movie?
Although roger Corman and crew had a fix for this… when a movie about chicken fighting was flopping roger had a producer take some of his old movies and edit parts of them in a trailer making it all look crazy and then edited the trailer in the movie as a nightmare … didn’t help much tho and it was taken back out for cable tv
Infamously the movie Predators had a scene in the trailer where a character has at least a dozen laser sights aimed at him at the same time, implying the movie would have dozens of Predators. In fact that was digitally altered exclusively for the trailer as in the actual movie it’s a much smaller 3 laser sights. People at the time we’re PISSED at least according to the message boards of the time.
I saw the trailer for “Spaced Invaders” which included lines of dialogue that were actually funny. No such dialogue appeared in the movie (and in fact, it seemed that the voice actor was different in the trailer than in the movie). This was in 1990, so it’s not like I hold a grudge (I did marry the woman I took to that movie).
In 2011 there was a movie called Cowboys & Aliens. I saw the trailer and it was an incredible two minutes. When I eventually saw the movie I was saddened to discover that the trailer was the only good two minutes in the film.
I chose not to sue.
Ah, the case known as The Human Race v Bicentennial Man…
The ad campaign for Bicentennial Man is extremely misleading. The trailer presented it as a funny Robin Williams comedy but it was actually a depressing “nature of existence” man-or-machine drama, with only a few lines of Robin Williams humor. ALL of which were featured in the trailer.
If that’s the bar the lawsuit needs to meet, then the studio better write out a check.
I think it’s obvious that the purpose of a trailer for a movie is to lure people into seeing the movie. And trailers don’t appear spontaneously. Somebody produced the trailer and decided what footage would appear in it in order to achieve that purpose.
Well, I do hate that expression (“Get a life”) as if the one who says it has a legitimate “life” and the other person doesn’t. If Akaj said that to me, I probably wouldn’t want to be their friend. That’s as far as the animus would probably go.
Between the time a movie is cast, even before it shoots, and the movie is finally released, years can pass. It’s not uncommon for a supporting actor to unexpectedly blow up as a movie star in the interim. I don’t know anything about this movie in particular, but there are many examples of a star being featured heavily in the marketing, but then in the actual movie (which was shot many months earlier) they have a smaller role because they weren’t yet a star when they were cast.
For example, here’s the video box art for a 1989 turkey called A Fool and His Money.
The casual browser will be forgiven for thinking this is “a Sandra Bullock movie,” because it assuredly is not. If you actually sit through it — and, for the record, I very much do not recommend you do this — you’ll find that Bullock is like fourth-billed in the cast, with a role to match.
Here’s another good example:
Glancing down that cast list, you’d expect this to be an epic all-star extravaganza. But mainstream audiences were confused when they actually watched the movie, and a couple of those prominent actors showed up for a single scene, or in one case basically a single shot. This was the source of much griping from viewers who don’t understand Terence Malick’s highly idiosyncratic approach to film production (and caused a fair number of people to wrongly conclude from the complaints that it’s not a good movie, when the opposite is very much the case).
Anyway, the takeaway is — and again, not knowing anything about the particular movie that is the subject of the lawsuit — it’s entirely possible that AdA won a small supporting role in the early going of her career, which did not survive the editing process, but that the marketers, desperate to put eyeballs on screens, leveraged in the advertising.
Of course it’s misleading. It’s a movie trailer. The point is to get butts in seats, full stop.
All advertising is misleading. Somewhat.
The whole legal flail comes in deciding when “some” shades into “too much.” Despite the advertisers’ desires to the contrary, they do not get to decide by their collectively actions what the “going rate” is and how much puffery and raw falsehood is too much. The line is definitely gray, not black-and-white. But, like the truth, it is out there.
What would be nice is if we actually had an enforcement mechanism for violations of written code law, rather than having to rely on class action lawsuits to punish crimes and (ideally) deter future similar crimes.
On the one hand, I’m not inclined to agree that the damages are lawsuit worthy. I mean, I guess you can file a lawsuit on whatever grounds you want, but come on. This is a matter of watching a damn movie. There’s never a guarantee you’re going to like a movie under any circumstances (unless it’s one you’ve seen before).
On the other hand, I do think the film industry should feel some obligation to make sure their trailers are, in some way, somewhere close to the neighborhood of being somewhat representative of the movies. Accentuate, okay. Exaggerate, okay. Feature a known actor in a “major role” (per the article) that was completely cut? No, not so much.
This. The US’s regulatory agencies are so limited in their power that class action lawsuits have been the way to get companies to straighten up a lot of times.
I went to see The Peacemaker (90s movie with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman). It is about the heroes attempting to avert nuclear terrorism. I distinctly remember that the trailer featured a nuclear explosion, while the film itself disappointingly did not.
Yeah, that was even worse for later DVD/VCR releases (because more time has passed for actors to blow up).
Original release for Mazes and Monsters
Later release
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/WEBP_402378-T1/images/I/91V6ssU+HNL._AC_SY445_.jpg
What happened?
You see that with old movies a lot. Someone playing a supporting role wasn’t especially famous at the time, but at some point became huge, and so the movie is listed with this person as the lead.
There’s a film called The Joy of Living, which stars Irene Dunne (a HUGE star in her own time), with Lucille Ball playing a supporting role, in this case, Dunne’s idiot sister, and it’s not a comic part. Ball actually played a lot of nasty characters before she established herself as a comedian, and this is one.
Anyway, Lucille Ball fans tuning into this movie are going to be very disappointed.
I feel there’s a line between misleading and fraudulent.
Let’s say you show a famous actor prominently in a movie’s trailer. But that actor only appears in a few minutes of the actual movie. That’s misleading.
But show a famous actor in the trailer and that actor doesn’t appear at all in the movie? That may cross the line into fraud.
IANAL but I feel the studio will go for the argument that a movie trailer should not be regarded as a condensed version of the movie. It’s a distinct creation that serves as an advertisement for the movie not as a stand-in for the movie.
Look at this trailer for Psycho. Obviously this was not a compendium of scenes from the movie.
Re: Thin Red Line, I remember Walmart actually used to sell one of those discount 3-DVD packs featuring it among other “George Clooney” films. Like, that was the entire selling point of the 3-pack: they were all supposedly Clooney films.
Don’t remember what the other two were, but having seen (and liked) Thin Red Line, it’s always a bit of an eye-roll feeling to see it advertised as a George Clooney film.
For those who haven’t seen it (no spoiler) Clooney has only a brief appearance at the end, effectively delivering a speech that is meant to be tedious/monotonous to the POV character of the moment. It has no impact on the plot whatsoever. It’s atmospherics at best. Not unlike how the soundtrack might be used in other scenes.
See also The Human Race v Being Human also staring Robin Williams.
Did you go to the bathroom at the wrong time?
The parallel scene in the trailer shows the nuclear detonation, but cuts much of the scene, so it’s not the source of the above video:
(Runs from 0:28 to 0:36)
Clocked at 300 mph in the crashing spaceship by a police speed trap.
You’re saying, “There goes my insurance” ain’t funny?