10 AWESOME Movie Trailers (Then The Film Sucked)
8. Your Highness
The Trailer
The trailer for David Gordon Green's stoner fantasy comedy Your Highness sold it perfectly, by initially mounting it as silly, seemingly PG-13 Lord of the Rings knock-off starring Danny McBride and James Franco.
If the joke seems to be that McBride and Franco are the last actors you'd ever seriously cast in a straight-faced fantasy film, things take an added hilarious turn when the villainous Leezar (Justin Theroux) is introduced.
When Franco's Prince Fabious asks Leezar how he's going to win the day, he retorts with "Magic... motherf**ker," before kicking the heroes' asses and stealing the virginal Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel).
From here the tone of the trailer totally changes, with the cast dropping profanity left and right while playing up the movie's R-rated sex-comedy overtones.
The Film
Though the marketing so brilliantly sold it as both an outrageous parody of fantasy movies and an entertaining example of one, ultimately Your Highness is another tragic case where all the best gags were given away for free in the trailer.
The end result is an aggressively mediocre, weirdly forgettable romp outside of the aforementioned trailer gags and an undeniably committed turn from Natalie Portman.
Franco and co. clearly knew it fell short of expectations, too, as in their follow-up comedy This Is the End, Franco said, "How 'bout we not do Your Highness 2?"