If you grew up in the early 2000s, you probably saw a trailer for Kangaroo Jack. The trailer gives the impression that the movie is a screwball road trip comedy about two friends and their wacky, talking Kangaroo sidekick. Except it’s not that. It’s an extremely unfunny movie about two idiots escaping the mob. There’s a random kangaroo in it for like 5 minutes and he only talks during a hallucination scene that lasts less than a minute. Turns out, the producers knew that they had a stinker on their hands so they cut the movie to be PG and focus the marketing on the one positive aspect that test audiences responded to, the talking kangaroo, tricking a bunch of families into buying tickets.
What other movies had similar, deceitfully malicious marketing campaigns?
No one said Starship Troopers yet? This is the trailer I remember most back then. Just a lighthearted fun action movie about blasting aliens, right?
I don’t see the problem with this. Everything in that 30 second clip was in the movie.