8. 'The Other Guys' Has Guns Replaced With...Pepper Spray?
In one of the more pathetic examples of political correctness gone mad in recent times (at least as far as movie advertising is concerned), the 2010 smash hit comedy The Other Guys was forced to have its advertising campaign altered in San Francisco, due to their stringent laws which explicitly outlaw advertising seen to be advocating or glamourising the use of guns. An understandable law perhaps, but this poster for the movie (on the left) isn't glamourising gunplay to anyone; if anything, the fact that they're flying through the air, and the general implausibility of Will Ferrell being able to actually fire a weapon with any aptitude, makes it anything
but a glorification of gun violence. Still, the laws won out, and so the poster replaced Mark Wahlberg and Ferrell's sidearms with...cans of pepper spray. Though it suits the silly tone of the comedy, isn't it just a bit lame and incongruent? Is there really not something cooler the poster artists could have Photoshopped into their hands? It's like the E.T. walkie talkie scandal all over again...