Alan Smithee

Been mad when they use music in a trailer not in the movie too. I saw "The Time Guardian" just because its TV spot had part of Tangerine Dream's score for "Miracle Mile" in it (which I was one of about 10 people to see theatrically, released by the same company) yet there was no Tangerine Dream music in "The Time Guardian". Remember taking some people to see "1492" at a theater I worked for at the time, and them being pissed that "Sadeness" by Enigma, which was in that movie's trailer, wasn't in the movie.

Suing for a movie whose advertising implied nudity, but really having none, would of course be entirely justifiable. The responsible parties' family fortunes should be turned over to the plantiff in a case like that.

bluetoast

Sounds like you just needed this. No judgements, I bought it back in the day.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AZJSjrox_2s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

resinrats

The first trailer for the 2007 Transformers was 100% not used in the film. It was the trailer showing the Mars rover & bot shadow. They used some of it in the later movies but not in the movie it was advertising.

GoldenJCJ

I'll be able to send my kids through college thanks to the WTC Spider-Man teaser trailer!!

RocShemp

Not really. About the only good parts were the few scenes shared by Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. The fight against Donnie Yen was pretty cool too but it ended up a cocktease given that he never fought again (and was later killed in the stupidest way possible).

That said, the theatrical cut was loads better than the producer's cut (the latter being the only cut on DVD).

RocShemp

Actually that footage was mostly used in the 2007 movie. It's the Mars rover footage that's shown to Jon Voight late in the movie.

printerati

In a similar vein, I was slightly annoyed that Kevin Spacey's "Now you're gonna have to deal with both of us" line in the trailer for The Negotiator was nowhere to be found in the film.

milo bloom

I read something a while back that explained it: since promotions and advertising have to start early, especially on bigger movies, one thing that the promotional people will do is go through the script and pick out scenes they think will make a cool trailer. As those scenes are filmed, they're given to the promotional department to assemble the trailer. Since this is well before the director assembles his cut, that's how the different scenes end up in trailers.

Paramount did the teaser for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country using only footage from the original series and first five movies. I remember thinking it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen.

Jay G.

It didn't. It was a complaint filed with the New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority, which is a self-regulating agency in the country. There's no direct parallel in the US, although the Better Business Bureau might be close in some ways.
http://www.asa.co.nz/

In addition to the ones already mentioned, Citizen Kane has a trailer that doesn't show any movie footage. Teasers often lack film footage. I'm thinking teasers for Toys, Terminator 2, Austin Powers 2, and Strange Days.

I think that would definitely fall under false advertising. Look at Paramount's defense here; they're saying that although the movie is missing a few shots from the trailer, the trailer still does convey "a true and fair reflection of the film which could not reasonably be considered misleading or deceptive." The trailer made the movie look like an action film, which it was.


This.

Movie trailers are started before they're done filming. They then go through dozens of permutations where all sorts of different people have to approve it. So scenes that the director shot but ultimately cuts may make it into the trailer before they were cut, and removing them would mean going through the approval process all over again.

Here's an old but good article that goes into detail about the art of making trailers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/ma...l-take-34.html

The article notes that M Night Shyamalan was sort of unique because he dictated that any scene he cut from the film had to be removed from the trailers, and that the trailers couldn't show any footage from the last 3rd of the film. Of course, this was back when he was very successful with his "twist" movies.


This happens because of the above. A film's score is often the very last thing done for a film, done after the final edit since the score often has to be timed exactly to a scene. Therefore, when editing the trailer, there's no original score to work from, so instead they use cues from other films or pop songs. Nowadays it's become a bit more common to commission a piece specifically for the trailer. The trailers for Star Trek 2009 and Inception are two that I've noted having unique trailer scores.

Mattflix

There are loads of trailers for oddball movies that try to make them look more mainstream. Inglourious Basterds' trailer only focused on a third of the actual movie. Observe and Report's tried to make it look like a typical Seth Rogen movie. Magic Mike was selling a Soderbergh movie to bacherlorette patries.

Could you argue that a trailer for a bad movie is misleading if it makes the movie look good?

In the end it's just a guy trying to make some money off a frivolous complaint.