Movies that failed to live up to their Trailers

The reasoning behind your selections can be anything.

My first two are horror movies which, for me failed to deliver the scares the trailers implied.

The Exorcism Of Emily Rose


The Fourth Kind

Shutter Island looked really good from the trailers but it seemed too slow for me and i even fell asleep for about 5 minutes.

I don't usually watch trailers. Partly because I'll often make up my mind before they're available and, partly, because most films don't like up to their trailers. Especially poor and mediocre ones.

I used to devour trailers by the truckload, but too many give away too much. It's become absurd. One of the reasons i like that Christopher Nolan fella' so much is that he seems to have a degree of control over the way his films are marketed, and the trailers rarely give away anything of significance, or anything which might surprise you the first time you see the film.

Anyway, I can't really list too many films here, because there are too many to list. It's become a very common occurrence; we have a generation of filmmakers who are arguably better at making trailers than movies. Not that I blame them -- it clearly works sometimes.

The first recent film that comes to mind, however, is Ang Lee's Hulk. The teaser trailer was fantastic, and the later trailers were, too, even if they showed too many of the cool action moments. Obviously, the film itself as a muddled mess.

I was very disappointed with "The Village". The trailer made it look a lot
better than the movie turned out to be. I guess I was disappointed that
there were not really creatures in the woods.

__________________
I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience. ~Wilson Mizner

The second half of this one is brilliant.

&p=82FAE51FD76FEDD9&playnext=1&index=4


The movie was terrible.

Watchmen. This trailer was an especially well edited work. The Glass pieces in the beginning work well.

&feature=related

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

[quote=Blue Lou;659884]The second half of this one is brilliant.

&p=82FAE51FD76FEDD9&playnext=1&index=4
I thought the teaser for the sequel, actually, was probably among the ten best teasers I've ever seen.

Great call. The first major trailer made me absolutely giddy.

Devendra Banhart makes everything awesome.

Except trying to sleep, or not think there's some sort of demon spawn under your bed.

But yeah, perfect choice for the trailer, and the concept, camera angle, and minimalism all made for a truly awesome teaser. Shame that the movie (I hear) is horrendously bad.

Most of the trailers I see are so bad I've been seduced by only one in recent years. It was the trailer for Saving Pvt Ryan where the mother sees an Army sedan pull up at her house and as she goes out on the porch and sees a group of officers get out of the car, she sits down in the middle of the porch knowing they're bringing bad news about her sons. It was a touching scene done with some feeling and historically correct. Of course, it wasn't just the trailer but all of the hype in papers and magazines about how authentic that film was to be and Tom Hanks and the other actors portraying his squad actually went through a mini-basic training course for a few days or weeks to learn something about how soldiers move and act.

But when I attended the movie, it didn't live up to any of its promises--Hanks and his boys didn't know dip about how soldiers move or carry their weapons. The only thing the director got right about the Normandy landing was that it was loud and in France. I ran out of interest long before the movie ran out of film.

I agree. I've seen films where all of the key scenes were shown in the trailer making it a collection of all the highlights. That's especially true of so-called comedies--they put the best lines in the trailer and all you have new in the film itself is all the lame material. It's gotten to where I can look at a trailer and can pretty well figure out the movie's plot and probable ending just from all the highlights in what is supposed to be something to encourage people to see the film.

I was disappointed because there wasn't a brain behind the camera, like a director who had a story to tell. All the creatures were in the village, a bunch of addled old hippies.

I'll posit this correlation then: the worse the film is, the more revealing the trailer.

And I think trailers have always been this way. Maybe even today trailers are less revealing, because you can experiment with teasers and such. Also nowadays you don't have it quite so easy with the narrator telling you the plot. I'm pretty certain that trope has already been done away with.

I completely agree with this and I think there's two reasons for it. OK, there's probably a lot more, but two principal reasons IMO are:

1. A lot of them are former music video directors.
2. Trailers are (now) a lot like music videos.

Like music videos, a trailer(s) primary purpose is to sell the 'product'. The audience (most) trailers are selling to are the same audience who watch music videos, so they're tailored to that audience. That audience don't seem to care too much about whether the 'best bits' are in the trailer or not. That, or they don't notice. Either way, putting them in isn't hurting the takings, so it'll continue until it does or until they think there's a better way of getting more (of the target) audience.

The previous generation of directors came from the ad world. While the point was the same (the selling of a product) they were marketing it to a different audience and an audience with different expectations.

YES. No lie, when I was writing my reply I started to type out this exact point, and then decided not to. Dunno why, but suffice to say, I completely agree. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg (are trailers like this because of music video directors, or do they hire music video directors because trailers are like this?), but regardless, it's got to be related, and probably self-reinforcing.

This is interesting; are there any directors, specifically, that you know came from the ad world?

Both are selling, as you say, but it's definitely different. I think there's a difference between a trailer trying to sell a ticket, and a trailer trying to create a buzz that will, in turn, sell tickets. I think modern trailers try to do the latter; it's more of a home run swing. It's less thoughtful, but if you do it well enough to get people talking, they do the selling for you. Or something rather like that.

>ad world

Two of our most innovative auteurs Gondry and Jonze.

Certainly not bad, but the novel was better.

Here is an ad by Michael Cimino.



I suggest you turn down the volume when you watch it.

I expected something from the spirit & Gamer. but i never finished the spirit because it was just plain bad & boring & gamer did not live up to my expectations.