4. Passengers (2016)
Take two of the biggest stars in Hollywood, throw them together in a high-concept sci-fi movie. Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Well, it isn’t, especially when your trailer neglects to touch on the biggest plot point of the entire movie.
The trailer for Passengers presents it as a tense sci-fi story in which two people are mistakenly woken from cryosleep to discover the luxury ship they’re travelling through space on is severely malfunctioning. It’s got Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, with Martin Sheen and Lawrence Fishburne in supporting roles. It also crucially teases a rather heartfelt romance between its protagonists.
The main story of Passengers is not just about the ship’s engineering issues, but also about Pratt’s character Jim stalking and effectively trapping Lawrence’s unwitting Aurora in a relationship while simultaneously dooming her to a lonely death. In other words, it’s far darker and creepier than the trailer lets on. Though the trailer doesn’t outright lie, it certainly misleads through glaring omission.