The end of the trailer for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Michael Caine and Steve Martin) has Martin pushing a woman into the water. Couldn’t find that scene in the movie. Was very disappointed.
re: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - what people often miss in the trailer is that when Steve pushes the old lady into the water, Michael smooshes an ice cream cone into a kid’s face.
Drive looked like a classier Fast and Furious. Turned out to be a slow noir film.
Passengers. Trailer sold it as an action romantic adventure. The reality was much darker and tainted the whole romantic element and Pratt being a hero.
The Shining was actually a bit darker than this trailer made it seem.
The trailer for UHF showed all the physical gags from the film, but there weren’t as many as you’d think. Fortunately, the film was actually much funnier than the trailer made it out to be.
Fight Club’s error? or genius? was that the movie was totally different from the trailers. During its DVD phase, by which time it had gained a bit of a cult movie status, the marketing switched from sweaty fighting (ho hum) to, well, pink soap. WTF? That’s the idea behind the movie…be unexpected and subversive.
I was that guy who, after seeing the movie (I must have seen a good review from the local alternative newspaper), dragged his friends to see it. They were all floored by the experience, in a good way.
This was 1999…a time of comparative optimism for us Gen X’ers. The message of the movie really resonated, it reached us probably by expertly and humorously summarizing all that we were somehow feeling unhappy about. When I was in high school, we had “The Breakfast Club.” Now that I had been working in industry and was supposed to be happy with my lot, but wasn’t, I had “Fight Club.”
The movie was dark, violent (in a self-harming way) and so weird. Over the top. But I just can’t forget it, and return to it occasionally for a repeat viewing.
How on Earth do you market something like that?
Oh, and BTW, the attitude of subversion preached by the movie reared its head in the real world from time to time, it was that attractive. I remember noticing, in amazement, a box of Avery labels (the kind you put through a laser printer) and seeing the address of Project Mayhem from the movie appearing as the example address on the cover art. Someone snuck that one in, and I “got” the joke. I’m sure nobody higher up at Avery was aware of it, because, you know, “you do not talk about it…”
Didn’t we just have this discussion?
As I pointed out before, some trailers for Arachnophobia only included the scenes with John Goodman, making it look as if it was a John Goodman comedy. But he was only in a very few scenes in the film.
One of the worst offenders, I understand, was Kangaroo Jack, which completely misled viewers about the film, making it seem like a kid-friendly comedy about a kangaroo. I haven’t seen the film.
I have to admit that, as a kid, I was disappointed in Dumbo, which everything lead me to believe was about the adventures of a flying elephant. In the film, though, which is overall pretty sad, he only really flies at the end.
The trailer I always think of for this topic is The Thin Red Line. The trailer made it seem like the movie was going to be like Saving Private Ryan. The movie was completely different, and IMHO sucked.
The one I think of is the original National Lampoon’s Vacation. The trailer had the peppy song, Christie Brinkley in the red sports car and an upbeat tone. The movie itself was actually a pretty dark comedy. A lot of people love it, but I was disappointed.
Sky Captain.
The trailer made it look like it was made by person or persons who understood the genre, and that it was going to be the coolest movie ever. An Indy Jones type movie for the new generation, where the tropes of thirties serials become reimagined for a modern audience.
Instead we got a movie that was made by person or persons who don’t understand the first thing about screenwriting.
IMHO The Thin Red Line did more than suck – I consider it the worst movie I’ve ever seen, especially considering the level of art-house snobbery attached to it.
An overly kind review once said “Steven Spielberg made Saving Private Ryan to pay tribute to the “Greatest Generation.” Terence Malick made The Thin Red Line when he wanted to photograph parrots.”
I won’t reprise my full rant here, but it displaced Highlander 2 at the bottom of my very unhappy list of worst cinematic abuses.
Executive Decision (1996)
Marketed as a Steven Segal action movie co-starring Kurt Russell.
Segal dies near the beginning of the film, with the true hero being Russell’s character
They often cut several versions of trailers to appeal to different audiences. For example, I remember the Cruise/Diaz movie “Knight and Day” had one trailer which was serious-spy-action and another that was rom-com-adventure. I heard the movie sucked, so they were probably trying to manipulate any way they could to get people to see it.
I really dont like that film. I dont see what people like about it.
Yes, that’s the Poster boy for misleading trailer. I had read the book, however, so knew what to expect. Still, not a bad film, really.
Yeah. And it had so much potential. 
Another reason the trailer may not represent the final movie is that, many times, the trailer(s) and marketing are being fixed while the movie is still in production, and almost always while it is in post-production. Therefore, changes to the movie will not be reflected in the trailer.
Yet another reason is that the movie, as-is, is unsellable. I was told this reason, specifically, is why the trailers for Flight made the movie look like a Law & Order-esque procedural as opposed to what the film was - a character study of a man with severe addiction issues who just happened to be an airline pilot.
It came out almost a decade before I was born, but I came across the original trailer for Duel on YouTube. That makes it look like some sort of action movie packed with car chases and high speed stunts. It’s really more of a psychological thriller. It looks like they pretty much just packed all the action scenes into the trailer.
I recently read an article about Office Space and how the Marketing was completely stumped on how to make trailers or even posters for it. One of the Appeals of the movie is, after all, Office life being incredibly bland. So they ended up with the post-it covered guy and nobody understood what this movie would be about.