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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Its real problem was that it came out a week after Jurassic Park Yep. It's hardto imagine how this thing made any money at all.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:39
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East is East has a really awful trailer that bills it as a wacky comedy all about the son of a Pakistani immigrant in Britain who's trying to avoid an arranged marriage to a Pakistani girl and the hilarious hijinks that ensue (complete with record scratch). Instead that's only a really minor part of the movie. It's equal parts funny and sentimental, has a real understanding of the characters, and arguably the father is the main character if anyone is.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:59
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Kingsman's advertising made me think it was a dumb action movie aimed at teens, and Spy's made it seem like it was a Melissa McCarthy action spoof where she falls over and screws up. Fortunately good word of mouth got me to see these anyway, and I was surprised that they were both smarter movies than they seemed to want to be perceived as. Misdirection can happen both ways, I guess. 
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Aug 5, 2015 19:05
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Cyrus' trailer sells it as a hilarious comedy - afterall it has Jonah Hill and John C Reilly, how could it not be? But after a while you can pick up on the little things that are obviously marketing bullshit, and I think I was the only person in the screening not disappointed. It's always fun when they try to sell non-English language films, as you always get a voiceover but there's never any dialogue from the movie at all.
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Aug 6, 2015 14:58
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Drifter posted:Nobody was disappointed by Last Action Hero, were they? I mean, the first twenty seconds of the trailer to that movie was Arnie doing a Macbeth parody. Hamlet, actually. (I know this is incredibly pedantic, I just wanted an excuse to post that clip.) Blisster posted:Drive and Spring Breakers were both marketed as non-stop action thrillers but they're a lot more arty and weird. That seems to be a common marketing tactic. The trailer for The American also focused heavily on the action scenes, despite the film being more of an introspective character study.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:09
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InfiniteZero posted:I liked it when they used flamethrowers. I liked it wen they used flamethrowers, too, which made it all the more confusing on first watch when they would flame the Thing to death and then someone else would explode into the Thing even though it made no sense because everyone told me the Thing was a shapeshifting alien creature and definitely not a contagious mutant tumor. But at least it gave us more opportunities for flamethrowers so yay! (I'm not being sarcastic, seriously, yay!) 
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Aug 6, 2015 18:49
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Big post. I swear I'm not crazy, I mostly just transposed, copy/pasted from Wikipedia, etc.Basebf555 posted:At the time Last Action Hero was perceived as a major misstep by Arnold and a commercial failure. I'm sure it made plenty of money but just not as much as T2 I guess. There were a shitload of young kids and dumb adults who saw it without realizing it was a parody and left the theatre still not realizing it was a parody. This was a time where you really needed to be clear that your movie is a parody, like if it didn't have Leslie Neilson in it people were going to be confused. I'm thinking we might need some more context/ clarifying over what happened with Last Action Hero.
You know, now that I think of it, Arnold does have quite an unfortunate history with the Jurassic Park series.
I wonder if Arnold ever encounters an image of a T-Rex and responds with shaking his fist at it and cursing its name, I wouldn't blame him. **(Just me speculating, but I don't doubt that Arnold's line as Mr. Freeze "What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!" *freezes dinosaur statue* was meant to be a friendly-competitive dig at the movie's summer box office rival).
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Aug 6, 2015 19:23
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As crazy as it sounds, I think Arnold's performance in Batman & Robin has aged a lot better than anyone else's in that movie. I liked Clooney in the role at the time but now it just seems like he's barely trying.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:33
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Batman and Robin owns.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:40
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InfiniteZero posted:I find that increasingly when I go to movies there is a distinct lack of Harry Dean Stanton. This means that more often than not, I'm throwing up my hands and walking out of most movies near the end, shouting "WHAT THE gently caress NO HARRY DEAN STANTON". Harry Dean Stanton is, like, 400 years old now, so get used to not seeing him in a lot of movies going forward.
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Aug 6, 2015 20:20
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InfiniteZero posted:I hate it when movies aren't just a string of jokes and instead have things like characters and story arcs and poo poo. I am glad to know someone likes seeing the same dull character arc for a millionth time.
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Aug 6, 2015 20:57
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lizardman posted:The only movie off the top of my head that became a big hit riding on this concept (I'm sure there's one or two I'm forgetting) is Scream, and it's telling that that film's WAY less literal and explicit than the usual "we're inside the movie!" plot. Yep, then the movie that explicitly parodied Scream became more well-known than Scream for sending up horror movies, while using Scream's original title.
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Aug 6, 2015 22:01
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It's a video game, but Brutal Legend falls in this category. The game was shown off to be a Zelda style adventure game in all the previews and demo. Then it ended up being a weird real time strategy. It was unique for sure, but that turned me off on it big time.
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Aug 7, 2015 00:22
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lizardman posted:I liked it wen they used flamethrowers, too, which made it all the more confusing on first watch when they would flame the Thing to death and then someone else would explode into the Thing even though it made no sense because everyone told me the Thing was a shapeshifting alien creature and definitely not a contagious mutant tumor.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:36
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Adlai Stevenson posted:I'm having a hard time imagining people watching Last Action Hero, seeing Danny DeVito that talking cartoon detective cat, and still not realizing that maybe the movie is goofing around a bit. There are people who are flat out in denial that Commando and Dredd are satires.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:13
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lizardman posted:Big post. I swear I'm not crazy, I mostly just transposed, copy/pasted from Wikipedia, etc. Would something like LAH be much better received today if it were released? The idea of a film being action-comedy or a film with the budget and prestige of an action blockbuster being simultanously very satirical and comedic seems so much more common today than 20 years ago. You get Transformers with its film-stopping scenes of comedy, the MCU films where everyone is quipping, the remakes of older cult TV shows and movies as big budget events that with campy comedic references or direction, etc.
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Aug 7, 2015 06:18
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The trailer for Bridge To Terabithia is a transparent attempt to persuade you its a Narnia ripoff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SvqEIKP4t8
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Aug 7, 2015 12:38
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Stranger than Fiction was portrayed like the latest wacky Will Farrell comedy, when really it was a well done character driven drama. I love the film but it would have been terribly disappointing to see in theaters if you were expecting the standard Will Farrell laughs and craziness.
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Aug 7, 2015 19:06
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Red Eye was a great bait and switch trailer. If only the entire thing had been the tone of the romcom first half of the trailer. Actually that makes me wonder, did trailers for From Dusk Till Dawn give away the vampire twist or was it marketed as a straight crime movie? EL BROMANCE posted:It's always fun when they try to sell non-English language films, as you always get a voiceover but there's never any dialogue from the movie at all. The Don't trailer from Grindhouse parodied the formerly widespread use of American voiceovers for even British (B-)movies.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:12
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Chairman Capone posted:
Surprisingly, yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bBay_1dKK8
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Aug 7, 2015 22:18
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Gotta go with Good Luck Chuck here. The movie is about Dane Cook's curse - any woman he sleeps with will fall madly in love and marry the next guy after him. When this is revealed, he is beset on all sides by women who want to gently caress him once and then find their true love. He's "Good Luck Chuck" to women. The first trailer showed this, and bombed. Jessica Alba is also in the movie as a clumsy girl who Cook meets and falls for but doesn't want to sleep with, knowing that he's cursed to have her fall for someone else immediately after. So later trailers emphasized just how clumsy and dangerous Alba's character is to be around, and the title added an implicit comma: "Good Luck, Chuck."
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Aug 7, 2015 22:37
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Chairman Capone posted:Actually that makes me wonder, did trailers for From Dusk Till Dawn give away the vampire twist or was it marketed as a straight crime movie? From Dusk Til Dawn was marketed as a vampire action/horror movie.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:38
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The coolest thing ever was I missed the first 3 minutes of From Dusk Till Dawn. I turned the tv on one night and it was on. I had no clue what I was watching at all. It was some highway kidnapping movie or something. And then it just went nuts. I remember watching it spiral into insanity and just loving every minute of it. Going in cold was so much fun. I can't imagine why they would give that away in the advertising.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:49
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Watching From Dusk til Dawn when it came out was a lot more confusing because of the first part. Taking this in a slightly different direction, I feel like Caché was presented more as a psychological thriller with a mystery underlying it, and throughout the film also hints at some political allegory. But that doesn't really work as the subject of the film, and I'd call it a slight misdirection (even if one could make the claim that the title suggests its themes could be hidden, I don't think it works all that well.)
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Aug 7, 2015 22:53
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space-man posted:The coolest thing ever was I missed the first 3 minutes of From Dusk Till Dawn. I turned the tv on one night and it was on. I had no clue what I was watching at all. It was some highway kidnapping movie or something. And then it just went nuts. I remember watching it spiral into insanity and just loving every minute of it. Going in cold was so much fun. I can't imagine why they would give that away in the advertising. That kind of thing is great when you're just randomly watching a movie on TV just to have something on and you're down for whatever, but it's a whole other matter when folks are specificaly going to a movie theater and paying money to have a pretty specific kind of experience. You might be able to get something like that to work these days where "Hey apparently From Dusk Til Dawn is actually a VAMPIRE movie?" could go viral and spark curiosity, but at the time I think it would have been box office suicide. People would walk out and demand their money back. Honestly I'm more surprised the movie got made at all with the genre twist intact. Come to think of it, just how far would a movie have to go where you could actually have a legit case in court for false advertizing?
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Aug 7, 2015 23:09
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lizardman posted:Come to think of it, just how far would a movie have to go where you could actually have a legit case in court for false advertizing? Most of the false advertising tactics revolve around either charging you more than advertised in some way or another. The only way a film would be subject to deceptive advertising is if it said "this film will cure cancer" or something outrageous like that.
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Aug 7, 2015 23:20
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Snowman_McK posted:There are people who are flat out in denial that Commando and Dredd are satires. Since Commando predates the type of film that it would supposedly be spoofing I'm inclined to agree with those people. Z
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Aug 8, 2015 04:59
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Simplex posted:Since Commando predates the type of film that it would supposedly be spoofing I'm inclined to agree with those people. Z Chuck Norris was already a thing, as was the concept of the unstoppable action hero (albeit less steroid fueled) Commando took it to its logical conclusion, then was imitated, completely without irony, by everyone else.
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Aug 8, 2015 14:13
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computer parts posted:Surprisingly, yes. I love that 1996 was a time when Harvey Keitel got top billing over George Clooney. computer parts posted:Most of the false advertising tactics revolve around either charging you more than advertised in some way or another. I feel like they'd have to show you clips from a completely different movie or something and insist that was the film you were going to pay for. Didn't some woman try to sue because she expected Drive to be more of a Fast & Furious type movie and instead got a Nicolas Winding Refn movie? That poo poo doesn't fly because everything in the trailer is in the movie. Generally that's why I can't take the OP that seriously. I understand it sucks when you go into a movie and the trailer has mislead you, but that happens all the loving time that I just completely ignore trailers these days with rare exceptions. I knew going in Trainwreck was a Judd Apatow movie so I expected it to play like Knocked Up - funny and crude romantic comedy but balanced with melancholy and tragedy.
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Aug 8, 2015 15:50
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TrixRabbi posted:I love that 1996 was a time when Harvey Keitel got top billing over George Clooney. Wasn't From Dusk Till Dawn Clooney's big breakout film role?
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Aug 8, 2015 18:34
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Chairman Capone posted:Wasn't From Dusk Till Dawn Clooney's big breakout film role? He was famous for being on ER at the time but it was his first major film role. He had already won Emmys by that point though. Then he did some romantic comedies, Batman, Out of Sight, and then Three Kings.
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Aug 8, 2015 23:42
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lizardman posted:
They did but the launch got delayed and the rocket didn't launch until long after the movie had come out and disappointed everyone. My favorite lying trailer is Man of the Year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qbhKVxPEzs Robin Williams plays a John Stewart type comedian who runs for president, then actually wins and we get to see him stick it to all those corrupt politicians. Except the movie is actually a political thriller about a woman who works for a company that makes voting machines. When she discovers an error that will make the wrong person president the company will stop at nothing to silence her. The whole movie wraps up before Robin Williams takes office.
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Aug 9, 2015 02:01
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JediTalentAgent posted:Would something like LAH be much better received today if it were released? The idea of a film being action-comedy or a film with the budget and prestige of an action blockbuster being simultanously very satirical and comedic seems so much more common today than 20 years ago. You get Transformers with its film-stopping scenes of comedy, the MCU films where everyone is quipping, the remakes of older cult TV shows and movies as big budget events that with campy comedic references or direction, etc. Arnold himself scored a big hit the very next year with True Lies so I don't think it was people just not being ready for satirical action comedies. The concept was probably too on-the-nose for a lot of folks and might have looked self-indulgent (the movie practically revolves around what a huge star and icon Arnold Schwarzenegger is).
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Aug 9, 2015 23:05
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lizardman posted:(I should note that I don't subscribe to the "a movie must gross twice its budget" notion which I think is Hollywood BS accounting; studios would have you believe every movie lost money if they could). With the theaters getting some variable fraction of the gross, commercials, billboard ads, and assorted silliness, I'd believe it for the ~$100 mil type movies. It's been said the average split I've the course of a run was 50% and Disney strong armed 60% for Avengers. But the biggest blockbusters get the best deals anyway. Now the figure used for the "budget" is silly Hollywood Accounting but I think the double the budget part of the equation seems sound. About genre twist spoiling, some of what is being seen is that it's too risky to hide a twist, especially one that's betrayed early in the film. Looked at by virtue of what's onscreen, [i]Terminator 2[i] is credibly presented as the police officer being the hero and Arnold once again being the threat. But there's practically no footage you could use for a full trailer that wouldn't make the twist clear and wouldn't allow them to use the liquid metal footage as the great hook that it is. Similar for Dusk Till Dawn. It would be great to show it to someone trailer unseen but you can't make a trailer for the movie that would really draw a crowd with the opening half hour. Especially since a lot of that is Tarantino's creepy pedo/rapey character and his delusional leering. The other part is just the studio trying to put butts in seats. I loved Nightcrawler but I'll acknowledge that you won't get nearly as many people to see a character study as you will if you promise them a psycho who gets in a car chase causing mayhem. So every trailer features the car and him screaming at the mirror. Nobody is going to see a movie about the nightmarish trauma a little girl receives that forces her to perceive a grotesque fantasy world as a way to cope, but they'll see an awesome special effects update to the Neverending Story! Nothing is worse than the nightmare fuel that wolf provided, right? Oh, I guess the real world in Pan's Labyrinth is actually worse. What's that quote "A trailer is the film the studio wished they had made." I do get a chuckle out of the practice. If you ever see a trailer where someone angrily shoves paper in the air in slow motion, it's going to be a slow english manners drama. If you see someone make a joke and then they offer a roll eyes or a laugh from a character clearly in a different scene, the movie will not be an outright comedy. And if a supposed primary character is in a scene in the trailer which lasts too long or is seen too many times, they're not the main character and will either die or have only a cameo. I remember being pleasantly surprised that Isla Fisher was alive after her into in Now You See Me because they showed her in the fishtank way too many times in the trailers.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:37
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Our Idiot Brother was a lot more serious and depressing than I had thought it was going to be.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:47
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Snowman_McK posted:Chuck Norris was already a thing, as was the concept of the unstoppable action hero (albeit less steroid fueled) Commando took it to its logical conclusion, then was imitated, completely without irony, by everyone else. I'm not sure which movies you're even referencing. Missing in Action came out the year before, but that seems kind of an obscure thing to satirize. The earlier Chuck Norris films are either straight up Kung Fu movies or more similar to something like Walker, Texas Ranger. Rambo 2 is pretty much the defining 80s muscles, guns and explosions action film, but that came out only a few months before Commando. Commando is fairly light-hearted, goofy and has a number of actual jokes in it. But, I think you have to keep in mind that the biggest action star of the 80s isn't Arnold or Sly, but Eddie Murphy. Action-comedy movies just absolutely crushed the more straight-laced action movies at the box office. On topic of the thread my favorite example is Executive Decision. The trailer and some of the promotional material hype up the presence of Steven Seagal in the film (some going as far as to give him second billing), which is kind of funny for a couple of reasons. A.) Whoever was in charge of the marketing didn't think Kurt Russell was a big enough action star to put butts in the seats, and b.) Steven Seagal was. Anyways, the trailer promises Under Siege at 30,000 feet, which the movie technically delivers on. What's funny though is that Seagal is barely in the movie. The scenes of him in the trailer constitutes almost his entire performance in the movie. Then his character dies at the end of the first act. 20 years later it just seems like an unbelievably bizarre bait and switch. John Leguizamo and Halle Berry seems like an adequate supporting cast that you wouldn't need to hype up Steven Seagal's bit part. But this is a world where Under Siege was a hit and Seagal at the time seemed like he was on his way to be the next big action star.
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Aug 10, 2015 23:13
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Oh my God Executive Decision is such a time capsule. Not necessarily because of 90s trendiness necessarily, but there are just so many things that jump out at you that would either be done differently or not at all these days. There's the aforementioned Steven Segal part, you have Halle Berry being treated like a random no-name, and not only are Islamic terrorists the villains, but in the end the head villain plans on suicide-crashing the plane into Washington DC!
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Aug 10, 2015 23:32
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There were barely any "make an overly complicated device with household objects" gags in MacGruber at all, after having been adapted from a recurring SNL sketch entirely based on that premise.MicrowavesMom posted:"Muscle dude is really gay" is such a played-out joke that not even John Cena can sell it. Haha you expected John Cena to sell.
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Aug 11, 2015 01:47
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The Grey was a lot more methodical in pace, with a lot less action, than any trailer showed. The main sell from the trailer doesn't go where it seems. I quite liked it.
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Aug 11, 2015 04:54
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Simplex posted:I'm not sure which movies you're even referencing. Missing in Action came out the year before, but that seems kind of an obscure thing to satirize. The earlier Chuck Norris films are either straight up Kung Fu movies or more similar to something like Walker, Texas Ranger. Rambo 2 is pretty much the defining 80s muscles, guns and explosions action film, but that came out only a few months before Commando. Commando is fairly light-hearted, goofy and has a number of actual jokes in it. But, I think you have to keep in mind that the biggest action star of the 80s isn't Arnold or Sly, but Eddie Murphy. Action-comedy movies just absolutely crushed the more straight-laced action movies at the box office. Fair enough. In that case it would just be a straight up comedy, but it's remarkable how many people call it 'unintentionally hilarious' rather than realise that it's very much supposed to be funny.
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Aug 11, 2015 10:29
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