What’s the worst advertising for movies that you’ve ever seen? I don’t necessarily mean poorly done, maybe it was just inappropriate for the movie.
In the inappropriate category: Fight Club. A brainy comedy/drama was advertised as Brad Pitt and Edward Norton beating people up.
Some time ago, we had a “worst movie trailer” thread. Someone proposed the trailer for the movie Supernova, and if you can find it online, by God it’s horrible. A retarded monkey could edit together a better trailer, and would probably choose more appropriate music, too.
One of the most unintentionally amusing taglines of recent years was:
“Everybody has their limit. Enough. Jennifer Lopez.”
Although I think all of them are not worth watching in the first place, it seems to me like the trailers for the new Scary Movie completely ruin what could possibly be one of the few funny surprises in the movie.
“But I am your daughter”
No you’re not! You’re Michael Jackson! AHAHAHAHA!
… although honestly I don’t see why that is funny, in and of itself (maybe there’s some context to it; probably not), you’d think they’d leave it off the trailers so that at least SOME easily amused individuals would be pleasantly surprised by it, but no…
Way to ruin your already crappy jokes, assholes…
Every trailer for a comedy these days ruins all the jokes. In many cases, they show the only decent jokes in the entire film.
Trailers for dramas, OTOH, give away plot points. This is a deliberate practice on the theory that people don’t want to be surprised when the see a film.
The best recent trailer, BTW, was the one for Comedian
Sometimes I think the studio looks at a movie, realizes they have no idea how to market it, so they just do their best to put the clips together to look like it’s a completely different (and easier to push) sort of film.
My favorite example of this is the trailer for Todd Haynes’s ode to glam rock, Velvet Goldmine. The trailer is one of the most misleading things I’ve ever seen, and actually kept me from seeing the film in the theater. See, I like rock movies, but the trailer portrayed the film as a whodunnit where the victim just happened to be a rock star. Judging from the trailer I figured the focus would be on the murder investigation and not the music, so I stayed away (as did pretty much everyone else on earth). I saw the film a couple of years later on DVD, and as it turns out the murder investigation isn’t the main focus of the film.
In fact, it’s not a part of the film at all, because no one in the movie is murdered! Just after the opening credits it looks like the rock singer gets shot, but a couple of minutes later we see the newspaper headlines announcing that the whole thing was a hoax. The “mystery” of the film isn’t “Whodunnit?” but rather “Why’dhewannapullthatstunt?”
It’s a spoof of the scene in The Others where Nicole Kidman sees her daughter as a scary old woman.
Hands down, the trailer to “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks. It basically gave away the ending.
The director, Bob Zemeckis, has said that he thinks trailers SHOULD give away all major plot-points to a movie…because he is of the opinion that Americans don’t want to see anything that might surprise and/or shock them.
You may recall that another Zemeckis film, What Lies Beneath, also had a trailer that revealed a critical plot-twist, one that essentially rendered the entire first hour of the movie pointless.
Ah, well…
I’m glad Scary Movie 3 was mentioned, because one of the scenes featured in the promo/trailer - Queen Latifah saying something like, “I’m prophesizing my foot halfway up your–” - wasn’t in the movie at all. I know this happens from time to time for different (and sometimes legit) reasons, but still!
All promotion for a movie called The Mighty made it out to be a Sharon Stone movie with Harry Dean Stanton in it. But the movie is actually about two outcast half-formed kids, excellently played by Kieran Culkin (paraplegic) and Elden Henson (not too bright), and how they dealt with life by working together to form one whole person. Wonderful film!
Also Iron Giant was inadequately promoted, despite being arguably the best animated feature film in recent history.
Maybe someone in post-production remembered that the word is actually “prophesying.”
I know the Postman would be impossible to have a good trailer for but I hear the orginal one had people rolling in the isles
“You’re not a POSTMAN! You’re just a drifter with a bag of mail!”
You tell him!
That Godzilla movie was pretty strange. They refused to show the new look for him so they were stuck showing his feet and closeups of his eyes. Could have been a clever lead in but since that didn’t have much else to show it looked really lame.
Cold Creek Manor
It’s advertised as a supernatural (the house is trying to kill you) type thriller.
It’s actually a very tame this guy is trying to kill you and there’s no mystery to it at all. There is, however an absolutely HILARIOUS snake scene. I was crying I was laughing so hard.
It wasn’t supposed to be funny.
Yeah, I knew what the Scary Movie scene was a spoof of…
I still don’t see why it’s funny.
And I’m glad someone mentioned the Postman, so I can do a complete and utter hi-jack, and ask if I’m the only one who thought that movie wasn’t so bad. Even kind of enjoyable, in fact.
I think, though, that I may just be a sucker for post-apocolyptic themed movies.
I liked it. It wasn’t great, but I thought it was entertaining.
I personally rather enjoyed the theatrical trailer with the (edited) scene of the fisherman on the dock, leading up to the tagline “SIZE. DOES. MATTER.” It drew my attention to a film I might have otherwise ignored entirely - partly because it didn’t show too much, and partly because it demonstrated a certain sense of humor in the buildup rather than just a 60 second sequence of Cars Being Squashed By Giant Feet or some such thing.
As to the original question - the trailer for The Fifth Element always struck me as being rather strange - the mood is one of a rather straight, serious sf/action file (albeit one with a very stylish look to it), as if it was aimed entirely at fans of Die Hard with no regard for the humorous, over-the-top self-parodying aspects of the film.
Oh wait, that’s probably exactly what they had in mind. :smack:
Heh. Well, maybe. Or maybe I got the word wrong. But either way, the scene wasn’t in the movie.
I read in some review that The Matrix Reloaded spoof scenes in Scary Movie 3 didn’t test well with audiences and most were removed including the one in the trailer featuring Eddie Griffin and Queen Latifah. Anything that lessens the screen time of and shortens the showbiz career of Eddie Griffin is alright by me.
As I said I think it could have been a clever lead-in but since 99% of the movie was him running around crushing things they didn’t have anything interesting to show. (at least that’s my opinion) If the movie itself had been more subtle the subtle trailer would have been great.
I’ve said it before, but 12 Monkeys suffered from this, too. All the commercials made it out to be one of those tries-to-be-intellectual-but-is-just-mindnumbingly-stupid “art” films, whereas when I finally saw it, it turned out to be good SF and far and away the best time travel movie I’ve ever seen.
Two good (bad?) examples of this:
Fools Rush In with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek. The trailers made it out to be a w-w-w-wacky romantic comedy. In fact, it was a decent romantic drama about cultures clashing with a few comedic moments.
More recently, and very egregiously, is the movie Anything Else. The trailers made it seem like a standard teen romantic comedy starring Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci. In fact, it’s a Woody Allen movie starring Woody Allen, Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci.