10 Genius Misdirects In MCU Movie Trailers
Infinity War's Wakanda money shot was an ingenious fake-out.
Marketing is of course so, so important where a movie's success is concerned - sell a film in the wrong way and it just won't connect with audiences, no matter how good it might be.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has basically mastered the art of selling their epic tentpole movies at this point - they've got the formula down pat and clearly know how to get audiences hype to see the latest entry into the franchise.
And while most of the time the MCU has succeeded by simply delivering the fun superhero thrills promised by their marketing, every so often they've gone out of their way to actively deceive fans.
Though it's a major faux pas for trailers to misrepresent a movie in a cynical attempt to make more money, that's never really been the MCU's M.O. They've almost always done it to conceal a surprise and ensure that even the most spoiler-savvy of fans won't quite know what to expect when heading to the cinema.
And so, from changing the context of scenes through editing to digitally altering them and even fabricating entire shots that never appeared in the damn film, these are the 10 most brilliant misdirects in MCU movie trailers...
10. Bucky Shoots Rhodey Out Of The Sky - Captain America: Civil War
This one's elegantly simple and required nothing more than a sneaky bit of editing, but it sure as hell got fans talking.
The second trailer for Captain America: Civil War seemed to show Bucky (Sebastian Stan) shooting Rhodey (Don Cheadle) out of the sky, possibly killing him in the process.
Given that the film was centered around the conflict between Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), it absolutely tracked that Bucky shooting Rhodey would further heighten the emotional stakes of the fraught scenario, so what was there to doubt?
Yet as it turned out, these shots were actually taken from different scenes entirely: Bucky was firing his gun from a scene much later in the movie, while Rhodey was shot out of the sky by Vision (Paul Bettany), who did so accidentally.
For months fans were wondering how the MCU could possibly walk back Bucky either gravely wounding or outright killing an Avenger, and the truth is simply that he didn't do it.