10 Movies That DELIBERATELY Didn't Give Fans What They Wanted
2. Jarhead
Sam Mendes' 2005 war drama Jarhead was deviously marketed to general audiences as a pretty typical war movie, splitting the difference between character drama and explosive set-pieces. With an all-star cast led by Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx, what wasn't to like?
Except, the brief slivers of action teased in Jarhead's trailers aren't at all reflective of what the movie is. It's actually an anti-war film about the tedium of soldiers sitting around during the Gulf War and waiting for something to happen.
If its critics called it "boring," Jarhead is really a film about boredom, examining its central characters' own alienation and listlessness as they "hurry up and wait" to fight.
It's a ballsy move for a film that Universal still spent $72 million on, eclipsing the budget of even Steven Spielberg's decidedly more action-heavy, huge-scale Saving Private Ryan.
Jarhead's a great movie all things considered, but the complaints about its manipulative marketing weren't totally unreasonable, and it unsurprisingly tanked at the box office.
But before moving on to our #1 pick, know that it'll contain spoilers for the new Scream movie if you haven't seen it yet...