7 Times Movie Marketing Campaigns Misled Their Audiences

The process of making a movie consists of many different things. You need a large crew, a good set designer, a group of (preferably decent) actors, a budget, equipment, soundtrack writers, visuals etcetera. There are many things that can make or break a movie, and a production company has to pay close attention to all of those key points, if they want their movie to succeed.

But even with all of that managed perfectly, even the best movie couldn’t make it without this one key element: an audience. Marketers have been struggling for years to find the best way to promote a movie. The campaign should reach a lot of people, it should be funny, or catchy, but also make people curious. But this is not always an easy task. In this list, we look into ten notable examples of misleading cinema, that show how movie advertising can go wrong, and what positive or negative effect it has on your audience.

 

Lost in Translation (2003)

Four years after her success with The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sofia Coppola joins forces with producer Ross Katz and releases Lost in Translation, for which she would later receive four Oscar nominations. One of which being the Oscar for best directing, the first ever for a female director. The movie was acclaimed by lots of film critics, especially for its minimalism: a very simple linear storyline, a minimal amount of dialogue and all that combined with beautiful camerawork.

However, a lot of the everyday cinema going people did not like the movie as much. The movie they expected, presented itself as being a comedy film with Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, who were strangers in a strange land. Ten years after his hilarious performance in Groundhog Day (1993), and after playing other quirky roles such as industrialist Herman Blume in Rushmore (1998) and neurologist Raleigh St. Clair in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Bill Murray plays the role of Bob Harris, an aging actor who copes with a strained marriage and is going through a midlife crisis. The two Americans arrive in a hotel in Japan, and suffer from a culture shock. This causes for a lot of misunderstandings, and this would probably be the source of a lot of the jokes.

But instead, Lost in Translation delivers a beautiful perspective on the loneliness in relationships and the existential feelings one might experience living in a big city like Tokyo. The film does not reward the viewer with a happy ending, and at the end, you are left with a vague idea of where the characters’ lives are at. The two grow closer to each other throughout the story, but not in a way we would have thought when seeing the trailers. People who expected a hook-up were disappointed, as the closest the movie gets to some romance between the two star actors, is a very mild Elektra-complex feeling between the two. They share some intimate conversations, and in the end admit that they are going to miss one another.

Bridge to Terabithia (2007)

Remember the kingdom in the wardrobe, Narnia? Well prepare for its out-of-franchise sequel: Bridge to Terabithia. Starring Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) and Anna-Sophia Robb (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), this 2007 fantasy movie tells the story of Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke. These 12-year-old neighbors are both outsiders at school, and turn to eachother when in need of friends. Together, they create a fantasy world called Terabithia, reachable by a swing across the river on a magic rope. There, they spend most of their time renovating an old abandoned tree house. The movie seems to be a more child-friendly adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s novel by the same name; more special affects, more fantasy and wonder.

For this reason, true fans of the book stayed away from the movie, thinking it would be a cashgrabbing Hollywood adaptation. Fans of the normal fantasy genre, mostly children and their parents, were the ones who flocked to the cinema’s to see this film. What most people didn’t expect though, was that the movie touched some very dark themes, and turned out to be an emotional and heartfelt ride about friendship, loneliness, bullying and losing a loved one. The young Josh Hutcherson delivers a moving perfomance as his character goes through the stages of loss, acceptance, and finally strengthens the bond between him and his little sister. It is a shame that the studio didn’t think a story like this would sell, and so decided to promote it as a family movie like any other.

The Grey (2011)

“Let’s go watch Liam Neeson fight some wolves!” Most people had a similar expectation, or motivation, when they went to see The Grey, three years after Liam Neeson’s blockbuster movie Taken. Watching the trailer, surely you would get some Neeson fight scenes, right? Sort of like Taken, but then with wolves?

Liam Neeson plays a depressed Irishman, John, who is in charge of a group of oil workers. The crew experiences a plane crash in the wild wilderness, and from there, the story takes Neeson as well as the viewer on an adventurous ride through the middle of nowhere. Apart from Neeson’s great acting performance, there is something else remarkable about the movie. There are no female characters whatsoever (except John’s wife in a flashback and a quick shot of a waitress).

While the movie turned out quite good, most people were greatly disappointed, and even claimed the movie false advertised people into going to see it. One major complaint that most had, is that one of the selling scenes from the trailer, Neeson fighting a wolf, appears only in the last shot of the movie, and cuts right before the fight begins. We’ve seen this happen before, with the release of The Amazing Spider-man 2 in 2014, where Spider-Man is to fight The Rhino. This fighting scene was shown in every trailer and TV spot, only for fans of The Rhino to find out the movie ends right before the fight.

All and all, showing the endig to a movie in the trailer is not exactly false advertising, but it does not sell well with the viewers, who expect the trailers to tease a scene, which will be shown fully in the movie itself.

Punch Drunk Love (2002)

After his two major successes Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson was said to be hungry for some good-hearted cheer, and turned to Adam Sandler for his new project. The people who know Sandler’s movies, often know him as a slapstick comedy actor, in movies filled with easy and simple jokes. So, when watching a movie starring Adam Sandler, you would expect an easy brainless three-act movie filled with fart jokes and silly voices, which would leave you satisfied on a Saturday evening. Paul Thomas Anderson realised this, and wanted to use that to make a new film called Punch Drunk Love.

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a single 40 year old man who owns a company with a product line of novelty toiletries. He is constantly abused by his seven sisters who ridicule him and never stop invading his privacy, bossing him around and denigrating him. All this leaves him in a depressed and lonely state, which eventually drives him to calling a phone-sex line. At the same time, he also meets Lena (Emily Watson), a coworker of his sister. The movie is a beautiful merge between the everyday Adam Sandler movies and Anderson’s marvellous directing. For someone who has such a reputation of ridiculous characters and blatantly bad movies, Adam Sandler does a wonderful job portraying the lonely and desperate life of Barry Egan, and surpised a lot of people doing so.

In conclusion, this movie did not deliberately mislead his audience. On the contrary, it gave Sandler the chance to prove to the world what an actor he can be, with the right script and the right directing. However, all of Sandler’s past movies were the ones that misled the audiences of Punch Drunk Love. So sometimes, misleading your audience is simply inevitable, because of the actor’s reputation.

Spring Breakers (2013)

Spring Breakers is the perfect example of a movie that split the audiences opinions. Getting reviews that write it off as an easy “sex sells” movie for teens, while also being praised by some of the highest acclaimed critics. But what is it that makes this movie so good/bad? And why were a lot of people tricked by director Harmony Korine, maybe without even realizing it?

The trailer shows three girls, played by Disney stars such as Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, who leave for Spring break. They are in need of money, and get their hands on some when robbing a restaurant. This puts them on a path of maljustice, leading them straight to the drug lord Alien, portrayed wonderfully by James Franco. Some even say this has been his best role yet. The trailer promises everything needed in a plain teenage girls gone bad movie: drugs, alcohol, sex.

While the movie did provide what it promised, Disney stars in bikinis, drug aftermath scenes and a gangster villain/antagonist, it offered much more than just that. When one takes the time to look past the superficial storyline, Spring Breakers is clearly a satiric attack on the mainstream media and its effects. The movie makes fun of American television, and its obsession with skin-showing, drug-taking characters. Director Harmony Korine, famous (although not so famous at all at the time) for other black-comedy movies such as Trash Humpers (2009), might have been a red flag for those who knew him before taking on Spring Breakers.

A movie thus can be misleading, while not even visible to the average viewer. It has, as one might say, misled by misleading.

Godzilla vs Megalon ゴジラ対メガロ (1973)

This 13th Godzilla movie, by Jun Fukuda, features some of the greatest fight scenes of all the Godzilla films. One of the most famous Godzilla moments, the slow motion jump into the water, originated from this film. The late Fukuda also directed the 12th and the 14th Godzilla movies. All three were huge successes in Japan.

The movie starts off with an underground civilisation named Seatopia, that has had to suffer the consequences of human nuclear tests for years. They plan a revenge and release their own monstrous creature, named Megalon. After stealing Jet Jaguar, a brand new super-robot, built by the humans, and kidnapping its builder Goro Ibuki, they use Jet Jaguar to lure Megalon to Tokyo. Goro has to do everything he can to escape and gain control over Jet Jaguar, and use him to seek help from Godzilla. The movie ends with an epic fight between Godzilla sided by Jet Jaguar, and Megalon, sided by the hill monster Gigan who appeared in Godzilla vs Gigan (1972).

Where were this movie’s audiences misled? Take a look at the American poster for the 1973 movie. There are a few things that the marketers had completely wrong. First of all, it shows both monsters on top of the World Trade Center. This gives the impression that the movie would take place in New York, or maybe even somewhere else in the United States. Instead, all the scenes in the movie are located in Japan, and the monsters never even leave the island. This was a huge disappointment for non-Japanese fans, as they expected a Godzilla movie that would finally take place in another country, a country they could more relate to. Secondly, look at the size of both monsters. Megalon made its first appearance in this movie, so the viewers wouldn’t know how tall he was. And we also know that Godzilla’s size is quite inconsistent throughout the movies he is in. For example, in the original Japanese version, he is about as tall as the average Tokyo structure, but in the American version, they made him about twice as large. Considering all of that, he is still portrayed ridiculously small on the poster for Godzilla vs Megalon.

While mistakes like that shouldn’t matter so much, people tend to notice these things and build up expectations around them. Movie posters are often more important than studios realise, and a good movie poster can have a great effect on your movie’s hype.

 

Drive (2011)

Frantic car chases, police sirens, screeching tires, robberies and more. That is what the trailer for Drive showed and promised us. Another movie in the line of Need for Speed, Fast and the Furious, and Born to Race, but with beautiful shots woven through it. PG violence scenes, maybe some romance scenes with Mulligan. It looked like the movie would fit right in the with the other mindless action filled Hollywood blockbusters.

This might be considered as the most misleading trailer for a 21st century movie. Apparently, studios didn’t think the movie would sell, so they gave it a new look in their trailers, and surprised everyone. Fans of the “race-car”esque movies flocked to the cinema’s and were disappointed, and fans of classic kino films avoided the movie, and were surprised when the reviews started flowing in. It was critically acclaimed for its aesthetics, minimalism and acting performances. The movie shows a beautiful combination between bloody violence and long pauses, surrounding the uncanny relationship between Gosling and Mulligan. It creates an atmosphere unlike any other movie, and leaves casual audiences in confusion.

Having Ryan Gosling as a lead actor does not help with the confusion either. A lot of the female viewers associate Gosling with romances such as Lars and the Real Girl, and The Notebook. By being an actor who is able to play both the handsome romantic Don Juan and the troubled creature of the night, he keeps on surprising his fans. He switches from roles as Jacob the womanizer from Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), to Luke the violent stunt motorcyclist from A Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and to the dancing and singing Sebastian in La La Land (2016).

One Michigan resident even went as far as filing a lawsuit against Drive and the production company, saying the movie showed far too little resemblance to what was promised in the trailer, and even called director Nicolas Winding Refn out for adding in anti-Semitic themes.

This was a beautiful movie, and the fact that it was promoted otherwise did not influence that opinion at all. In fact, it shows proof of a directing style that does not thrive in a world of mainstream audiences. Maybe Winding Refn wanted to test the people of Hollywood, by challenging them with a movie that did not fit the everyday blockbuster criteria.

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.