In essence, movie trailers simply exist to build excitement ahead of a movie’s release. It’s a fairly straightforward marketing tactic: showing exciting or interesting moments from a film should serve to tempt audiences into seeing it. However, there are a number of movie trailers that actually lied in the pursuit of marketing their film.
The exact reasons behind this deceit vary. Sometimes it’s simply because the trailer uses scenes cut from the finished film, but there are also more flagrant attempts to mislead audiences. Some hint that a film is a different genre entirely, and others seem to promise the heavy inclusion of characters who hardly feature at all. Though it’s not always the sinister manipulation that it appears to be, it is, generally speaking, a pretty underhanded practice. Here are 9 examples of movie trailers that blatantly lied about the film they were marketing.
9. Drive (2011)
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is rightly celebrated as a tense and brilliantly-crafted film, and we’re not here to debate that. However, as good as Ryan Gosling’s near-mute performance is, Drive‘s marketing left much to be desired. In short, the trailer lied.
Drive‘s trailer showcases a good deal of action, hinting at a non-stop thrill ride. The inclusion of multiple car chases, shootouts, and action sequences make Drive seem to be a relatively average action thriller. In reality, the film is actually much more.
Though Drive is ultimately better than its trailer suggests, the marketing still lied about the movie. The decision to include almost every action set piece in order to set a tone that doesn’t match the film is baffling. Even so, Drive is great, so we won’t complain too much about this one.