Press junkets are a great way to sell a movie. Auxiliary to the trailers and posters, they give the film-makers a direct way to stir the hype pot, throwing out behind-the-scenes tidbits or little teases for the fans. Of course, if they don't want to go by common, or even morally OK, means, then they can always tell a big fat porky. Producers and directors lie all the time about their movies, yet never seem to be held accountable for it because... um... they pretend it's art? Michael Bay said he'd learnt from the mistakes of Transformers, yet only made something more titillating than before with Revenge Of The Fallen. He then said the same thing when promoting both Dark Of The Moon and Age Of Extinction, despite neither film showing any interest in doing more than appeal to teenagers. It's not the most potent example of lies tricking you (we'd like to think most people know before going in the film's are going to be crap) but highlights how easy it is to get away with. This is particularly common when a series has, in some way, offended the fan-base - just look at how the cast and crew of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were keen to push how they'd learnt from the first film (while simultaneously unlearning the lesson of Spider-Man 3). For some more examples of lies explicitly told to sell movies, check out 11 Flat Out Lies We Were Told Just To Sell A Movie (And We Stupidly Believed).
