10 Lies Told In Recent Movie Trailers

Warner Bros. wanted you to think Wonder Woman had a MUCH larger role in Shazam 2.

Shazam Fury of the Gods Wonder Woman
Warner Bros.

Movie marketing, like all marketing, is fundamentally an act of manipulation, of flashing a series of images before a potential customer's eyes in the hope of convincing them to buy a ticket.

And while we all hope that studios sell their films in good faith by correctly conveying the tone and advertising a proportionate amount of action and drama as reflects the end product, that's sometimes not the case.

Anyone who's seen a movie trailer can appreciate how deceptive they can be, disguising a movie's true nature and repackaging it to seem more exciting, action-packed, or just straight-up commercial than it actually is.

And for a multitude of reasons - not all entirely cynical - the trailers for these recent films flat-out lied to the audience.

While most of them clearly made an implication that wasn't true in the pursuit of hype, some more nobly concealed spoilers to retain the element of surprise, or decided to otherwise trick viewers in a way that was actually worthwhile.

The lesson here? No matter how good or bad a movie trailer looks, you can't ever guarantee it's going to be entirely representative of the end product...

10. Adding & Removing Ghostface From Shots - Scream VI

Shazam Fury of the Gods Wonder Woman
Paramount

First off, no major spoilers for Scream VI here.

After the marketing for the fifth Scream movie was criticised for making Dewey's (David Arquette) death way too obvious by showing a distraught Gale (Courteney Cox) outside of a hospital, the trailers for Scream VI pulled off some quite delicious chicanery indeed.

The trailers received some nifty digital manipulation to both add and remove Ghostface from certain scenes, and ensure that fans who pored over every single shot wouldn't be able to figure it all out.

Case in point, a TV spot showed Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) crawling across a ladder between apartments with Ghostface pursuing behind her, suggesting Mindy's life was in very immediate danger.

But anyone who's seen the movie knows that Ghostface hasn't yet broken into the room at this point in the scene. As such, Ghostface was CGI'd into the shot.

And secondly, the memorable shot of Sam (Melissa Barrera) falling from a balcony at the Ghostface shrine actually digitally removed the killer, who won't be named here.

In the version of this shot in the final movie, the unmasked killer also falls off the balcony to the left of Sam, yet thanks to some note-perfect digital removal, you'd never guess that anything was amiss.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.