7 Movie Trailers That Had Us All Fooled

Trailers are a great way to market a film. For years they've been used to draw in an audience and peak our curiosity. Whether it's by showing off exciting set pieces or revealing just enough to grab our attention while still keeping most of the biggest surprises hidden away, studios have been using movie trailers for decades now to market their films. But, what about those movie trailers that present us an inaccurate representation of the final product? You know what I'm talking about. Who hasn't walked into a movie having seen the trailer and been expecting one thing, only to get something totally different? It happens all the time, and whether intentional or not, we're constantly seeing movie trailers that misrepresent the film they're trying to market. Here, then, are 9 movie trailers that had us all fooled. By no means are we trying to say that these films were bad, just that we ended up getting something completely different from what we had been expecting. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street Was Actually A Musical So, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical. If you were familiar with the source material then you likely knew that, but for anyone who went into this movie based on the trailer alone, well, you were probably in for quite a shock. I mean, we really didn't get any indication at all from the trailer that this would be a full blown musical, did we? Featuring a brief scene of Johnny Depp belting out a tune, the rest of the preview presents Sweeney Todd as a dark, gothic revenge tale from the twisted mind of Tim Burton. It's misleading, to be sure, and I have no doubt that a good chunk of people walked into the movie expecting something completely different. While I can understand the purpose of marketing Sweeney Todd like the studio did, they really should have made it more clear that it was a musical. Just look at trailers for recent films in the genre, like Les Misérables and Into The Woods. They made no effort to hide what they truly were, and that's how it should be. Drive Was Not A New Instalment In The Fast And Furious Franchise I'll be the first to admit that I love Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. It's a brilliant film, and one of my favorites. But you can't tell me that the trailer, and the marketing overall, was not misleading. While not completely devoid of any action or thrills, Drive was by no means the Ryan Gosling-led Fast and Furious clone that the previews made it out to be. Unlike that high-octane, adrenaline pumping franchise where the action is constant throughout the entire movie, Drive is simply punctuated by brief, albeit effective, bouts of violence and action. Again, I love Drive, I really do, but it's a far more artistic movie than what we were led to initially believe. Those who were familiar with Refn's previous work probably already knew this going in, but those who hadn't seen any of the director's other films were no doubt in for a surprise. A pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. Iron Man 3's Main Villain Was Not The Mandarin It might be unfair to call the trailer for Iron Man 3 misleading, as the marketing team couldn't really spoil the big surprise in the previews, but I do think that it was slightly deceiving, as was the film itself. As we all now by know, Ben Kingsley's Mandarin was touted as the big bad for Iron Man 3, despite his character being just an English actor playing the part. Instead, Aldrich Killian is the real Mandarin and simply hired Kingsley's character, Trevor, to act as a mouthpiece. It was a total letdown, especially after so much build up, and quite frankly, it put a damper on an otherwise excellent film. Again, it's hard to blame the trailer for presenting Kingsley as the main antagonist, but Marvel fans looking forward to seeing the Mandarin go head-to-head with Tony Stark were no doubt quite upset when they found out they'd been duped. It also felt like a massive cheap shot to a beloved comic book character. The American Was Actually A Character Driven Art House Film I don't think anyone walked into The American expecting Bourne levels of action and thrills, but boy was this a slow movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the trailers certainly didn't advertise it as a character driven piece of cinema. Like Drive, The American is punctuated by the occasional bout of action, but its main focus is on Clooney's toned down, yet still impressive performance and the stunning cinematography, which is definitely easy on the eyes. If you can stick with it, The American is actually a very good film, it's just more for the art house crowd than the general public. Those who went into it thinking that they'd be seeing a badass Clooney kicking down doors and taking names ended up getting anything but that, and I'm sure that more than a few people walked out of the theatre awfully bewildered. Whether it was done on purpose or not, The American marketed itself to the wrong crowd, pretending to be a sleek spy thriller and instead turning out to be a slow, deliberately paced and beautifully shot film. The Grey Was Not Just A Liam Neeson Survival Movie Considering that The Grey was a January release, and hit theatres during the Liam Neeson renaissance, where the actor was starting to be taken serious as a bonafide ass-kicker, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was just another mindless action flick with a Neeson defending his friends from a pack of vicious wolves. Admittedly, in some sense, that's kind of what The Grey is, and it is definitely what the trailer marketed it as. But then you peel back the layers and you start to realize that beneath the harsh, winter exterior lies a surprisingly deep existential drama with well developed characters that asked its audience a bevy of intriguing philosophical questions. Taken this is not. Far from it. The Grey is perhaps one of Neeson's best films in recent memory, and that's thanks to a thoughtful and complex screenplay and director Joe Carnahan's bold vision for what could have been just another January dud. Spring Breakers Was Not Just An Excuse To See Hot Girls In Bikinis One of the most misleading trailers of all-time belongs to Spring Breakers. And the same can really be said about its entire marketing campaign. But then again, that's exactly why the film is so damn brilliant. Judging by the trailer, you'd think that Spring Breakers was an excuse to see hot girls running around with little to no clothing on. And while we did get a lot of that, we also got a biting social commentary on the recklessness of youth. Admittedly, most of that probably went way over the heads of many of those in the audience, but for those who picked up on it, it was a welcome surprise. As our own Jonathan Lack said: Spring Breakers is easily one of the best and smartest films of 2013, a movie that picks apart the myth of young adult individuality by showing how the things young people turn towards in search of making sense of the world – drinking, drugs, reckless sex, and even violence – are intensely subsuming and dehumanizing, with James Franco’s Alien, one of the year’s very best character evocations, standing in as the disturbing end result of it all. So yes, while the trailers may have been misleading, they were misleading in a good way, cleverly hiding the true purpose behind this brilliant film. The Cabin In The Woods Was Not Just Your Typical Monster/Slasher Film Has any film subverted expectations so gleefully as The Cabin In The Woods did? Here's another case of a trailer misleading us but misleading us in a positive way. You see, the marketing for this film painted it as just another slasher flick with dumb kids doing dumb things and thus, deserving their inevitable bloody deaths. Sure, there were flickers of something more sinister in the trailers (shots of a control room, levers being pushed, accusations of someone being behind the killings), but it was all very subtle and my bet is that the majority of the moviegoing public didn't pick up on it. And so, many people walked into The Cabin in the Woods expecting a couple of cheap thrills and not much more. I know I did. As well all know, though, audiences got a lot more than they bargained for when filmmakers Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon completely flipped the genre on its head, presenting us with a batshit crazy thriller that boasted a ton of ingenuity and wit. It could have all gone very wrong, but the execution was flawless and the result was one of my favorite films of the year, a sentiment that many people shared.