Warning: beware of some plot spoilers ahead!
Movie trailers are designed to sell us on a product, but they’re not always 100% honest. Sometimes they misrepresent the tone or plot. Sometimes they feature dialogue or entire scenes that aren’t actually in the final product. Madame Web is the latest example of that latter trend. The movie became an Internet meme on the back of one line from star Dakota Johnson, and it turns out that full line isn’t even in the final cut.
Now that Madame Web is in theaters, we thought it might be fun to look back at the movie trailers most guilty of misleading viewers. Whether it’s featuring characters not in the final product or conveniently disguising the fact that a movie is a musical, these are the trailers that blatantly lied to us. For shame!
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
This iconic slacker comedy focuses a great deal on the one-sided sibling rivalry between Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller and Jennifer Grey’s Jeanie Bueller. But did you know Ferris was supposed to have more siblings? The film originally featured younger sister Kimberly (Hannah Cutrona) and younger brother Todd (Josh Peden), but both were cut from the final version. They can still be seen in the trailer, however, with Kimberly accusing her brother of having contracted “syphilitic meningitis.”
Alien 3 (1992)
It’s not necessarily a great idea to release a teaser trailer for a movie before that movie has even begun filming. You risk getting audiences hyped up for a project you ultimately can’t deliver. Case in point - the early teaser for Alien 3 promised a movie very different from the one we actually got in 1992. It teased the idea of the Xenomorphs arriving on Earth to wreak havoc. Instead, Alien 3 takes place on a penal colony world, and most of the surviving characters from Aliens are unceremoniously dumped in the waste bin. It’s enough to wonder what might have been…
Kangaroo Jack (2003)
Kangaroo Jack is pretty much the poster child for misleading movie trailers. Based on those trailers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the film is a family-friendly adventure about two bumbling friends chasing a talking, rapping kangaroo across the Australian backcountry. The actual film is far more raunchy, and said kangaroo doesn’t actually talk, rap or even appear all that much.
Part of the problem here is that the producers were in the midst of attempting to water down their adults-only mob comedy into something more all-ages-appropriate, following a series of poorly received test screenings. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly work, resulting in a lot of angry parents and widespread critical drubbing.
Jarhead (2005)
2005’s Jarhead has easily one of the most misleading trailers in Hollywood history. The trailer paints the film as an action-packed war epic a la Saving Private Ryan. In truth, this film (based on a Marine’s memoir of serving in the Gulf War) is actually about the tense but tedious day-to-day reality of serving overseas. Jarhead did eventually spawn several direct-to-video sequels that are much more in the vein of what the original trailer was selling.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Musicals can be a tough sell for modern audiences, leading many studios to go out of their way to disguise them in marketing. We saw this trend in action with 2023’s Wonka, whose trailers went out of their way to downplay the songs. But this trend really took off with 2007’s Sweeney Todd, featuring Tim Burton’s spin on the iconic Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler musical. The trailers didn’t exactly advertise the musical element, resulting in some moviegoers filing complaints about false advertising.
Fortunately, Sweeney Todd proved to be a critical and commercial hit anyway, suggesting that maybe Hollywood’s fear about advertising musicals is overblown.
Drive (2011)
The Fast and Furious franchise was beginning to blow up again in 2011, so we suppose it makes sense that FilmDistrict wanted to market Drive as another adrenaline-fueled, high-octane movie in that blockbuster vein. But as anyone who’s actually seen Drive can attest, that’s not at all the kind of movie it is. The trailer is almost comedic in hindsight, making Ryan Gosling’s brooding, monosyllabic Driver seem downright chatty.
After Earth (2013)
His stock may have fallen a bit in recent years, but there was a time when Will Smith was among the most bankable stars in Hollywood. We can understand why Sony may have wanted to fudge the numbers a bit where After Earth was concerned. The trailers for this M. Night Shyamalan-directed sci-fi epic make it seem as though Smith and his son Jaden are equal co-stars, akin to 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness. But in reality, Will Smith’s character breaks his legs early in the film, leaving Jaden Smith to shoulder the heavy burden when it comes to this tale of survival. It’s hard to say how much that contributed to the lackluster box office numbers, but the relative lack of Will Smith screen time certainly didn’t help.
Godzilla (2014)
Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla remake hit in the wake of Breaking Bad’s acclaimed final season, a time when Bryan Cranston was at the zenith of his popularity as an actor. Perhaps that’s why the trailers for Godzilla go out of their way to make it seem as though Cranston’s character Joe Brody is the main protagonist. In reality, Brody dies in the first act, and the focus shifts to his son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Not that audiences likely cared much. They just wanted to see Godzilla smash things.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Godzilla isn’t the only Gareth Edwards movie marred by misleading trailers. Look no further than the Star Wars prequel Rogue One. The Rogue One trailers are notable for including many shots, scenes and lines of dialogue that are nowhere to be found in the final cut. That’s because the climax was reworked extensively via reshoots, leaving a lot of Scarif-based material on the cutting room floor. Still, the final version is a pretty darned great Star Wars movie, so we like to think it was all for the best.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Credit where credit is due - the trailer for Suicide Squad did a pretty good job of selling the movie. It advertised a dark but fun DC epic full of anti-heroes grooving to Queen music and battling Jared Leto’s Joker. The trailer was so well-received, in fact, that Warners wound up working with the company that produced the trailer to re-edit the film. But even with that shift behind the scenes, the actual film proved nowhere near as peppy or entertaining as the trailer made it out to be. And as for Leto’s Joker, it’s clear a lot of material was left on the cutting room floor. Nor does it seem like the fabled “Ayer Cut” will ever see the light of day.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
The trailer for Avengers: Infinity War features a number of scenes that don’t quite play out like they do in the actual movie. For example, a shot of Captain America wrestling with Thanos in Wakanda features an Infinity Gauntlet with fewer Infinity Stones, an apparent attempt to disguise how far along Thanos is in his master plan by that point. Or there’s the scene of Thor saying, “Who the hell are you guys?!?”, which then cuts to a completely different shot of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the trailer.
For the most part, those differences are minor. But the Infinity War trailer does include one major lie. It features a shot of the Avengers charging through the Wakandan jungle with Hulk in tow. As we all know now, Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner never transforms into Hulk after the opening act. In the finished version, the Avengers are seen charging through different terrain alongside a Hulkbuster-clad Banner.
Hereditary (2018)
Hereditary features one of the most memorable horror movie plot twists this side of The Sixth Sense, as Milly Shapiro’s character Charlie is killed off in gruesome fashion early in the film. That twist was all the more shocking because the trailers make it seem as though Charlie was actually the main character of the film. Pretty sneaky, A24.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Like its predecessor, Avengers: Endgame features a lot of material in the trailers that doesn’t play out exactly the same in the finished film. In this case, most of the changes seem intended to disguise spoilers. Hulk was edited out of multiple shots, while a scene with Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark trapped in space was modified to hide his loss in muscle mass. Shots of the final battle at the New Avengers compound were especially different in the trailers. For instance, the trailers hide the fact that Cap is wielding a broken shield, and the circa-2014 Thanos is shown wearing the Infinity Gauntlet when he teleports to the battlefield.
Yesterday (2019)
Like Ferris Bueller before it, Yesterday is guilty of advertising a character in its trailer that doesn’t appear in the final cut. The problem here is that said character is played by the very popular Ana de Armas. De Armas played a love interest for Himesh Patel’s Jack Malik, but that subplot was trimmed from the theatrical release. Some fans actually went through the trouble of suing Universal over this bit of false advertising, though the judge eventually threw the case out.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
By the time Spider-Man: No Way Home’s final trailer hit, it was an open secret that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire were both reprising their roles as alternate universe Spider-Men. Marvel and Sony were determined not to acknowledge those leaks, however, and the trailer was carefully edited to eliminate any sign of these two extra heroes.
Almost, anyway. The Brazilian version of the trailer includes a slightly longer shot of Spidey charging into battle against Lizard, Sandman and Electro, only for Lizard to be knocked back by an invisible force. There was clearly meant to be another Spider-Man in frame, a fact borne out by the actual film.
Morbius (2022)
Marvel Studios hardly has a monopoly on misleading superhero movie trailers. Sony’s Morbius trailers were also guilty of misrepresenting the finished product, specifically in terms of its connections to the larger Spider-Man universe. They show Jared Leto’s Michael Morbius encountering a still-imprisoned Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), and include graffiti art of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. In reality, Morbius and Vulture only meet during the post-credits scene, and the Spidey graffiti is MIA.
Madame Web (2024)
Madame Web’s trailer made a strong impression on the Internet, with a meme quickly forming around one particularly stilted line from Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb - "He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died." Sadly, it turns out that the complete line isn’t in the final version of the film. Though as IGN’s Madame Web review explains, that’s hardly the only problem facing the latest entry into Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.
What do you think is the most misleading trailer in Hollywood history? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
