History is full of photographs that never made it into textbooks, documentaries, or the collections of famous images we see again and again. Some capture ordinary people caught in an extraordinary moment, while others show familiar places before anyone could imagine what they would eventually become. There are strange details, forgotten faces, everyday scenes, and glimpses of life that feel remarkably close despite being decades or even centuries removed. A great historical photograph does more than show you what something looked like. It gives you a tiny window into a moment that was real, lived, and completely unaware that someone would still be looking at it years later.
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Sometimes the best way to sell a movie is apparently to lie about it a little. Trailers have hidden main characters, made comedies look like horror movies, convinced audiences an actor would survive much longer than they did, and occasionally avoided showing what the movie was actually about. Usually, finding out you’ve been misled would be annoying. With movies, it can make the first viewing even better. The audience walks in expecting one thing, the lights go down, and suddenly the story heads somewhere the posters and trailers carefully avoided mentioning. Looking back, some of these campaigns were almost as clever as the movies themselves.
Here are 15 times Hollywood tricked audiences before they even bought a ticket.
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Psycho (1960)
Janet Leigh was the biggest star in the cast and featured prominently in the movie’s promotion, encouraging audiences to assume Marion Crane was the protagonist. Then Alfred Hitchcock did the unthinkable and killed her before the movie was even halfway over.
Scream (1996)
Drew Barrymore was all over the marketing for Scream, making it easy to assume the biggest name in the cast would have a major role. Instead, Casey Becker became the victim of the now-famous opening sequence.
Godzilla (2014)
Bryan Cranston appeared heavily in the trailers just as Breaking Bad had made him one of television’s biggest stars. Anyone expecting him to lead the monster movie discovered fairly quickly that his role was much smaller than the marketing suggested.
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
The trailers leaned heavily into the fantasy world of Terabithia, making the movie look like a kid-friendly adventure in the vein of The Chronicles of Narnia. Anyone who saw it knows that’s not the emotional experience audiences actually got.
Kangaroo Jack (2003)
The trailers made a talking, rapping kangaroo look like the star of the entire movie. In reality, the kangaroo only talks during a dream sequence, while the actual story is a crime comedy about two friends trying to recover money.
Snow Dogs (2002)
Another early-2000s offender. The marketing featured talking dogs prominently enough to suggest audiences were getting a movie about wisecracking animals. The dogs only speak during a dream sequence.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
The trailers understandably sold Brad Pitt and his group of Nazi-hunting Basterds as the center of the story. They’re important, but the finished movie spends much more time with characters like Shosanna and Hans Landa than the marketing might have suggested.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Trailers pushed Guillermo del Toro’s movie as a traditional haunted-house horror story. Del Toro himself described it differently: a gothic romance with ghosts in it. Viewers expecting nonstop scares got something much moodier and more romantic.
The Village (2004)
Coming from M. Night Shyamalan, the campaign emphasized the creatures lurking beyond the village and sold the movie heavily on fear. The actual story is much more interested in isolation, grief, love, and the secret behind the community itself.
It Comes at Night (2017)
The title, poster, and ominous trailers suggested that some terrifying creature might literally arrive after dark. The movie turned out to be a slow psychological horror story about paranoia and mistrust, leaving some audiences wondering when “it” was going to show up.
The Grey (2011)
Marketing famously emphasized Liam Neeson preparing to battle wolves, including imagery from a confrontation that comes at the very end. The actual movie is a bleak survival drama concerned much more with mortality and grief than wolf fighting.
Catfish (2010)
The trailer deliberately presented the documentary almost like a suspense movie, refusing to reveal what Nev Schulman would discover about the woman he’d met online. What followed wasn’t the thriller audiences might have expected, but it did give the internet a whole new word.
Mother! (2017)
Posters and trailers positioned Darren Aronofsky’s film as a mysterious home-invasion-style psychological horror movie. That description barely prepares anyone for the increasingly surreal biblical allegory the film eventually becomes.
Magic Mike (2012)
The posters certainly weren’t shy about selling Channing Tatum and male strippers, and audiences understandably expected a light comedy. Steven Soderbergh’s actual movie spends a surprising amount of time on money, ambition, work, and the less glamorous side of the lifestyle.
The post 14 Movies That Tricked Us All With Their Marketing appeared first on Den of Geek.
