The Worst Trailers for the Best Movies

In a world… in which movies are just as much products as they are art, studios need to sell the latest releases to the broadest possible audiences. That means that they not only need to craft trailers promoting the films, but they need to misrepresent what films are really about.

On a certain level, that tendency toward misrepresentation makes sense. Trailers only have a couple of minutes to get people interested in the film, and complex works of art don’t lend themselves to such simplicities.

That said, it’s hard to see a masterpiece reduced to just a few sizzle moments, trying their best to ensure that the audience won’t be surprised or challenged by what they’re about to see. Here are some of the worst offenders in cinema history, movies that ended up to be so much more than what these teasers promised.

10. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Although Guillermo del Toro already released the wonderful 2001 supernatural drama The Devil’s Backbone, most American viewers still knew the director as the guy behind the cheesy horror movie Mimic and superhero flicks Blade II and Hellboy. So it’s understandable that neither audiences nor the distributor Warner Bros. knew how to market Pan’s Labyrinth, a rich, emotional fantasy with Del Toro’s now-signature stunning imagery.

But it’s hard to defend Warner Bros. decision to market Pan’s Labyrinth as a war film with horror elements. “In a dark time, when hope was bleak…” intones the narrator, set to mournful music and shots of soldiers and explosions. The trailer does make references to the fantasy elements, and does give a few looks at protagonist Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) as well as the Faun portrayed by Doug Jones. But Sergi López as Captain Vidal gets most of the screen time of the trailer, making the film seem like a dour war flick with occasional moments of fantasy when it’s really quite the opposite.

9. The Empty Man (2020)

Directed by David Prior and (very loosely) based on the Boom! Comics series by Cullen Bunn and Vanesa R. Del Rey, The Empty Man didn’t find an audience until it hit streaming. Folks who caught up with the film were thrilled by its despairing tone and mysterious plot, showing a level of interest that initial studio 20th Century Fox never expected. The Empty Man was shot in 2017, and then shelved by 20th Century for years, until Disney bought the studio and dumped the film in October 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.

Also not helping things was the terrible trailer, which tried to sell The Empty Man like it was an overwrought character-based clunker such as The Bye Bye Man or The Slender Man. Most of the trailer consists of teens explaining the “rules” of the Empty Man and his hauntings, with almost no indication of the creeping dread that Prior builds throughout the film and only a few shots of the protagonist (James Badge Dale). Judging by the trailer, The Empty Man is exactly the type of horror movie that should be streamed in the background while scrolling through social media.

8. Adventureland (2009)

It’s not fair to say that Adventureland has an inaccurate trailer. Written and directed by Greg Mottola, Adventureland does indeed feature Jesse Eisenberg as an awkward teen forced to get a summer job at the titular amusement park, where he befriends a resigned nerd (Martin Starr), falls for a beautiful woman (Kristen Stewart), and gets advice from a cool older guy (Ryan Reynolds). But the trailer really sells Adventureland as a raunchy comedy like Mottola’s previous film, Superbad.

Adventureland certainly has its raunchy elements, but the trailer fails to indicate what makes the movie so special. There’s a rich pathos to the story, especially in Reynolds’ character. Instead of treating him like an actually cool party dude, Adventureland presents him as pathetic loser who’s way too old to be working at the theme park and hanging out with teens. Even better, the movie doesn’t laugh at the character as much as it sympathizes with him, which matches Adventureland’s overall melancholy within its comedy.

7. Drive (2011)

Judging by its trailer, Drive stars Ryan Gosling as a chatty driver who fights gangsters in exciting action sequence after exciting action sequence. That’s because it uses almost every action sequence and line of dialogue that Gosling’s character (called “the Driver”) speaks in the movie and almost every action scene of the film. I say “almost,” because while the trailer has shots of the Driver preparing for a brutal attack in an elevator, viewers don’t see just how far the scene goes.

The trailer leaves out all of the stuff in between, namely the moody atmosphere that Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, working off a script by Hossein Amini, takes his time to build, leaving long spaces between set pieces and even lines of dialogue. That space sets Drive apart from other genre films, adding a level of romance to the proceedings. The Drive teased in the trailer would probably be a satisfying genre picture, but nothing like the beguiling movie that Refn made.

6. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

“I am not a soldier,” says Tom Cruise’s character William Cage at the end of the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow. That might be the sole indication of what Edge of Tomorrow actually is, something different than the inspirational sci-fi romance that the trailer promises. Based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and illustrated by Yoshitoshi Abe, Edge of Tomorrow takes place in a future when the Earth is at war with alien invaders. Under the command of Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), cowardly public affairs agent Cage is forced to the front, where he gets caught in a time loop.

The trailer promises a romance between Cage and Vrataski, as if they are long-lost lovers who find each other through the time loop. But that’s a minor part of the script, written by Christopher McQuarrie and brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. Director Doug Liman is more interested in the way Cage grows from wimp to war hero by dying and resurrecting in battle.

5. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Most of the trailer for Inglourious Basterds consists of Brad Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine reciting the speech he gives to the American G.I.s under his command. The trailer peppers shots of battlefield violence in between each line of his spiel, all of which promises exactly what most expect from a Quentin Tarantino movie: snappy dialogue and shocking bloodshed.

Completely missing from the trailer is the actual real focus of the movie. The two main characters, vengeful Jewish woman Shoshana (Mélanie Laurent) and the cruel Nazi slimeball Hans Landa (Christoph Walz). The emotional depth, fantastic performances, and metatextual elements that set Inglourious Basterds above the average fare is totally missing from the trailer. The movie promised by the trailer fits a Tarantino knock-off, not the actual Tarantino himself. 

4. Rear Window (1954)

It’s hard to include trailers from before the ‘80s alongside modern trailers, as the form changed quite a bit over the years. Clips that most would consider terrible now were actually great at the time they were released. Case in point: the trailer for Psycho, in which Alfred Hitchcock walks the audience through the bathroom where Marion Crane meets her end.

Even by that standard, the Rear Window trailer stinks. The five minute bit basically consists of Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart explaining the plot of Rear Window to the audience. Well, more accurately, they explain aspects of it to audiences, focusing on the various neighbors that Stewart’s Jeff watches and on the romance between his character and Grace Kelly’s Carol. The trailer pays way too much attention to unimportant aspects, never giving viewers a sense of the tense thriller that Rear Window actually is.

3. Pitch Perfect (2012)

Many of the trailers on this list simply misrepresent the movies they’re advertising. That’s not the case with Pitch Perfect, which has a trailer that does lay out the basic plot. Beca (Anna Kendrick) comes to school, reluctantly joins an a cappella group, and then inspires that group to do “remixes” of modern songs. Along the way are a couple of romances and some raunchy jokes.

Again, that’s more or less accurate. Yet, the trailer gets the spirit of Pitch Perfect all wrong, even if it understands the facts. In particular, the trailer really foregrounds Rebel Wilson and Adam DeVine, who both give big, loud performances. Meanwhile, the music, one of the pleasures of the film, gets downplayed, as well as the wholesome energy that makes the louder humor less abrasive.

2. Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars famously changed the spirit of science fiction movies in the 1970s, moving the genre away from the slow-paced, contemplative films represented by 2001: A Space Odyssey to something more fast-paced and adventurous. 

Whoever put together the first trailer for Star Wars didn’t get that memo. The trailer relies heavily on the Star Wars logo sloooooowly making its way toward the camera and voiceover narration. The flat, steady voice talks about an “adventure like no other,” an unconvincing claim given the random shots of TIE fighters flying across the stars or C-3PO introducing himself. Worst of all, the trailer lacks music from John Williams, which would have better indicated the majesty and wonder that made Star Wars such an enduring film.

1. Paddington (2014)

Anyone who doesn’t spend a lot of time on Film Twitter might not realized just how beloved the Paddington franchise is. Written and directed by Paul King and based on the children’s books by Michael Bond, Paddington and especially its 2017 sequel have been a delightful exception to the rule of most kids’ films, which tend to be crass and cynical. With King’s whimsical visuals and a gentle voice performance by Ben Wishaw as Paddington, the movies are everything that kid’s movies should be, but rarely are.

You wouldn’t know it by watching the trailer. A lot of the Paddington trailer consists of the titular bear getting befuddled by the implements in the bathroom of the Browns, the human family with whom he lives. Paddington sticks their toothbrushes into his ears, pulling them out to reveal ghastly gobs of wax before messing with the toilet, causing a massive overflow. In short, the trailer tells audiences that Paddington is just one more fart-joke, lowbrow movie version of a recognizable IP, not a movie that respects its intended audience.