12 Films Ruined By Their Marketing

Telling the tale of a military team who are left stranded in enemy territory, the film is a grisly war drama based on real-life events. So having Lone Survivor as a title is a dead giveaway that only one of these men will survive, but audiences will be kept in suspense, left to question who lives on and becomes the eponymous survivor, right?

Apparently not.

Every piece of marketing for the film made sure to stress over and over again that Mark Wahlberg was in the film and gosh darn it, you were going to know that he was the star. The posters quite literally put his name above the title and slapped his giant face right next to it, making sure that there was not even a shred of doubt to be had; Wahlberg would be the lone survivor.

A more ambiguous strategy could have put equal focus on all of the cast, especially seeing as it is based on a true story and those are the real-life men who died for this mission, but the studio instead opted to just treat it like any other action flick.

Low and behold, audiences were utterly shocked to find out that Marky Mark himself was, in fact, the Lone Survivor.