Today is April Fools Day. And every now and again movie trailers pull a prank on us. A lot of trailers are released months before a movie is released so test screenings and reshoots can often result in scenes being cut.
And sometimes actors are portrayed more prominently in the trailers even though they have limited screen time. Or their scenes are cut all together.
So this isn’t about that. Trailers for “Drive,” #Suicide Squad,” “The Expendables” and “Yesterday” give you a sense of what the movie is about. You don’t go to a “Godzilla” movie to see Bryan Cranston in every scene.
While some people have criticized movie trailers like “Cast Away” or “Dream House” which totally gave away certain plot points, there are the few trailers that flat out lied to us.
Now let’s address the elephant in the room or in this case the kangaroo as in “Kangaroo Jack.” Released in the middle of January 2003, this movie was presented as a slapstick family film of a talking and rapping kangaroo. But that’s not the case. The kangaroo barely appears at all in the movie. At 89 minutes with credits, the marsupial spends less than eight minutes on screen and most of the time he’s either alone in scenes obviously inserted during post or appearing in a CGI dream sequence.
youtube.com/watch?v=9qKRZY59nPk
That’s because the movie was originally titled “Down and Under” and intended as a hard R raunchy comedy with Anthony Anderson and Jerry O’Connell. But negative test screenings led the studio to do reshoots and re-edits. The ruse worked as “Jack” made over $90 million worldwide but a lot of people were disappointed. And considering most of the intended audience were kids, they didn’t get the movie they were promised.
But sometimes it’s just as easy to assemble scenes to trick an audience. People going into “Home Fries” in 1998 might have been expecting the most boring romcom with Drew Barrymore and a then unknown Luke Wilson. Actually the romcom part is only a subplot.
“Home Fries” is actually a dark comedy about two brothers played by Wilson and Jake Busey who literally scare their cheating stepfather to death. Barrymore’s character is really in a supporting role as the main focus is Wilson’s Dorian. She plays a pregnant woman who works at a fast food restaurant who dated the cheating man, who is married to a character played by Catherine O’Hara. While Busey appears briefly in the trailer, O’Hara has a blink and miss shot. Shelley Duvall who is also more prominent in the movie isn’t even featured.
Needless to say the movie bombed at the box office and received mixed reviews. However it’s developed a cult following thanks in part to being penned by Vince Gilligan who would later find success with TV shows like “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff “Better Call Saul.”
Four years after “Kangaroo Jack,” you’d think people would’ve learned their lesson. But unfortunately, fantasy movies had exploded following the success of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” movies. There also were adaptations of “The Golden Compass” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” so young people seeing the trailer for “Bridge to Terabithia” probably thought it was a kids fantasy movie.
And the trailer shows young Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb as two kids supposedly finding the portal to a fantasy world in a wooded area near where they live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxSs4mpFFRk.
But…that’s only a small fraction of the movie. There’s actually no real fantasy world called Terabithia. It’s a made-up place that the young troubled teens invent to deal with their problems of bullying and feeling out of place.
There’s no mention of Zooey Deachanel nor Robert Patrick who have more crucial roles. The movie is based on a 1977 book written by Katherine Paterson as her son, David (who co-wrote the screenplay), suffered the loss of his best friend when he was 8.
So you can guess where the story is going. During a weird, somewhat questionable one-on-one trip, Jesse (Hutcherson) is invited by his teacher played by Deschanel to go to an art museum on a rainy Saturday. And Leslie (Robb) goes to their special hideout playground as usual but dies off screen in a freak accident.
I remember the story from when I was in grade school and sadly I knew some people hadn’t read it when they went into to the movie theaters.
Some film critics hinted to the more darker nature saying it was more of a coming of age drama. Regardless it received mostly positive reviews and was a commercial success.
Death of a main character earlier than expected is always a surprise. But judging by the 2009 Robin Williams movie “World’s Greatest Dad,” you’d think it’s a raunchy comedy as it’s written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.
Williams plays English teacher Lance Clayton who is trying to get his novels published with no success. Things are on shaky ground with his girlfriend and his son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara), is an obnoxious perverted twerp who hates everyone around him. And a lot of people really hate Kyle. One night Kyle dies from auto erotic asphyxiation. Rather than have his son’s death be a joke, Lance writes a suicide note and places Kyle’s body hanging in the closet.
When the suicide note is leaked, the entire student body rallies around Lance as they had treated him badly before. But soon, people began acting like Kyle was their friend or they really liked him.
Released two months after Michael Jackson’s sudden death during the summer of 2009, Goldthwait and Williams present a brutal satire of social commentary on how people are granted Sainthood upon their deaths despite their horrible actions during life. I also think Goldthwait is examining the narcissism and egotism people have after someone they know passes away.
Lance releases some of Kyle’s “writings” that he wrote himself and it leads to him getting a possible book deal. Yet seeing all the fake love for Kyle presents him with the realization this has gone too far.
What do you think? What movie trailers made you think you were going to see a totally different movie?
Zane Says 