Movie marketing has never been more complex, with huge portions of Hollywood budgets dedicated to trailers, promotional photos, and toys. Thanks to this, there has also been a rise of trailers, with them being more important than ever for sparking up hype than ever.
But, it’s not an easy thing to get right. Often when marketing and moviemaking mix too much, you end up with a misleading trailer that throws you completely the wrong way. Movie fans are now discussing the most egregious and misleading trailers they’ve ever seen on Reddit, and there are some doozies.
Starting off with an atomic roar is the first peek at the 2014 Godzilla reboot. Built entirely around an ominous monologue delivered by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, viewers were frustrated when he was killed off within the first act. His death left the film’s human presence in the hands of Aaron Taylor-Johnson as soldier man and Elizabeth Olsen as a loving housewife. At least Godzilla was cool.
You can hardly talk deceptive trailers without mentioning The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Notorious now for the amount of trailer footage not in the film, the teasers kept showing peeks of entire subplots absent from the film. These included Peter Parker being under surveillance by Oscorp, a Sinister Six showdown, Mary-Jane popping up, and Peter’s parents coming back from the dead.
Marvel Studios are also strong at the sleight of hand with their trailers, with Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War both doing clever tricks to hide plot details by withholding what characters were wearing. Similarly, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had a few frustrating feints, including an alternate Strange delivering the line “things just got out of hand”.
Star Trek: Into Darkness had the same writing duo as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 coincidentally, also saw a lot of trailer and marketing shenanigans.
Of note is how audiences responded to each of these mentioned movies. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in particular saw negative reviews with fans unhappy with just how many subplots seemed to have been cut from the trailers. B
But that’s moviemaking. A test audience not reacting well to a plot thread can lead to a complete axing.