Little Miss Sunshine
The Life Aquatic
Lost in Transation
Solaris (Was billed as a sci-fi horror, but was a slow, brooding film.)

Had these reached the proper audience, they would have performed.

Dasuta

Demonbird

jerimiahf

jerimiahf

Papa Midnight

Dan in Real Life looked fun from the trailer. Sadly, I was bored after 15 minutes.

alienorgy69

Here's the prob with this practice: Intelligent people soon realize that they can't rely on previews to tell them squat all about a movie, so this gives them more impetus to d/l movies. If they like it they'll buy the DVD, if they hated it they'll delete it off their HDD and tell their friends not to waste their valuable time.

The government should EMBRACE this practice of d/l'ing, and REQUIRE it, as this would give MAJOR impetus to Hollywood and its ilk to start making quality films once more (like 3:10 To Yuma - holy crap, I'm gonna buy that on DVD, Blue Ray, AND HD DVD!!! jk, but it's definitely ending up in my legitimate DVD collection; then I'll probably buy it a 2nd time when it's available on Blue Ray at Walmart in the 5.50$ bin in 10 years :^)

banmojo

Biggest mess I've ever seen. and one of the worst uses of misleading trailers I can think of. Reason 2 (other than it was just plain horrible) that this movie failed, mis-placed marketing.

Sadly I did stay for the whole thing.

gyroball

Matt

I do think it is incumbent upon parents to make sure they either read the book with their kids before they see the movie, or have their kids read the book. Movies should be seen as a Cliff's Notes...a helpful supplement, but only as reference after you've read the real thing..

SpiderJerusalem

SpiderJerusalem

MARTHA__JONES

galactus5000

BuriedCaesar

I think the best example of this is Office Space. The advertisements really pushed "from the makers of Beavis & Butthead", while the movie had a completely different type of humor. The movie did poorly in theaters, but word of mouth lead to great DVD sales.

Ariah

alhypo

/half-joking

SpiderJerusalem

pestie

vincedotcom

^ This is an excellent phrase and I'm totally stealing it. Apologies in advance.

clank-o-tron

Witera33it

Of course misleading previews are a problem. I've seen a few previews that portray a film as a comedy when it is a drama and vice versa. This leads to wrong expectations and disappointment for people who are not in the mood to see that type of film. It's like biting into chicken that is actually fish. You don't think "good fish" you think "bad chicken". Expectations are important.

kevinhall

On a side note Cloverfield is looking like its going to be awesome from the reviews!

warf0x0r

warf0x0r

[www.apple.com]

And I believe none of the scenes used in the trailer are actually in the movie.

krunk4ever

I wonder if there's a list of the studios that are most sleazy in this regard?

Applekid

WEGGLES90

But to stay on topic, I thought Pan's Labyrinth was going to be a little girl's fantasy ride to deal with the war going on around her. I wasn't expecting multiple torture scenes. Good movie anyway.

dcndn

Boy was I suprised.

sleze69

The Village is my favorite example, because I actually was working at a small circulation newspaper at the time. My review was very critical partially for the same reasons as the article here, I felt cheated. I went wanting to see a horror film, I got a bulky overdrawn something (still not sure how to classify that movie). While I had other bones to pick with it, if the trailers had been more representative then I probably wouldn't have been so cranky.

That said, I think the trailers for National Treasure 2 actually completely represented the film. Okay, the scenes weren't in there, fine. But they still showed a fun, silly action movie steeped in American history.

Guess what National Treasure 2 was?

Meiran

polyeaster

However, despite my best efforts, The Matrix turned quite a profit anyways and I kinda like it now.

Bay State Darren

dancemonkey

But could you imagine a commercial for software that showed features from an early demo that ended up being left out from the final version?

Sounds like Hollywood needs version control, if they cared, or if it annoyed people enough to warrant.

girly

TechnoDestructo

I think there's two different points here. One is that it's "misleading" and thus unfair, about which I mostly agree with you. Scenes get added and taken out all the time, and I'm not going to blame a studio for trying to make a bad movie look good by making it seem more exciting or funnier than it actually is. That's advertising, and that's how it works.

The other one, which is what Turteltaub is talking about, is where a movie is presented in its trailers as being different -- not necessarily better or worse, but just a different type of film -- than it actually is. This is a problem because if people go to a movie expecting one thing, and they wind up with an entirely different film, that'll color their impressions of it, and bad word-of-mouth can seriously reduce viewership. A movie might have been geared towards a particular audience, and if it's mis-marketed, it can have a negative impact on a writer, a director, a movie studio, or even a genre in general. It's less of a consumer issue than an art and commerce issue, but it's definitely something to consider.

44 in a Row

Also, I've noticed when I watch a trailer for an old movie on DVD, like "The Graduate," they seem to be even worse about using plot-revealing footage from the last third of the movie than today's trailers. I stopped watching them before old movies I haven't seen before.

Propaniac

PaaatrickBabyBoy

It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last, that there are a couple of scenes in a trailer that don't make it into the film.

Hey, I liked the new National Treasure. I guess some people just don't feel like their day is complete until they've complained about something that doesn't mean a damn thing in the grand scheme of things.

barty

I understand why they couldnt give that plot element away in the trailer... but my problem is that it's not mentioned in the rating for the film, which simply says "Some material may not be suitable for children. Thematic elements including bullying, some peril, and mild language."

Would dying be classified under "some peril"?

PaaatrickBabyBoy

John

COELACANTH

forgottenpassword

Git Em SteveDave is starlost

44 in a Row

44 in a Row

B

Maybe they'll have a Gigli / Istar revival a few years from now...

Maybe not.

econobiker

mdkiff

stanfrombrooklyn

That's what happened to Gigli...

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