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?
The trailer for District 9 had stuff in it that wasn’t even in the movie and was all shot at normal camera angles instead of “I’m holding a camera and filming all this” style like the Blair Witch Project.
The trailer looked more like Independence Day, rather than a movie with cam footage showcasing aliens as poor immigrants.
That’s all B roll that the film crew following Wikus shot
Good for them? It was still a bullshit deception.