14 Movie Posters And DVD Covers That Blatantly Lied To You
Never judge a movie by its cover.
For the average moviegoer, a film’s advertising is a huge part of deciding what to watch. That was especially true before the rise of the Internet, when seeing an awesome cover at the video store could instantly draw you in. Before internet movie news became a currency, posters and box art were the kings of hype.
You might not have heard much about the movie, and it’s not like you could check its score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the artwork would be so intriguing that you had to give it a try.
There’s a problem with that, though: far too often, the promotional artwork is a complete lie.
Studios will blatantly misrepresent their film if they think it will sell better that way, promising something on the cover that the finished product fails to deliver on. Sometimes, the cover will show a really cool scene that never happens in the movie, while other times, it’ll claim an actor is the star when they’re only there for five minutes.
In the worst examples, the cover can even totally misrepresent the genre of the film.
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but that saying applies to films as well. If you were to judge these 15 films solely by their covers, you’d be in for quite a shock when you watch them and realize you were completely lied to.
14. Escape From New York
The Escape From New York artwork is so iconic that other movies like Cloverfield were clearly inspired by it. On the poster, you can see the head of the Statue of Liberty destroyed and towering over the characters as they run away in fear. What a cool image to sell a movie on, huh?
Unfortunately, nothing like this ever happens in the film.
In the actual movie, the Statue of Liberty only appears one single time, and it’s very much not destroyed: the film simply shows a regular shot of the real Statue of Liberty and then never mentions it again. Not only that, but nothing approaching this level of destruction ever occurs.
Though the film is about New York City being turned into a maximum-security prison, it’s not like the city is in ruins or anything as the promotional image suggests. The poster clearly implies this massive action epic that will be full of explosions to topple buildings, but in reality, the movie is much smaller in scale.
At least Cloverfield - which put a very similar image on the poster - actually did feature the Statue of Liberty prominently, and the head really was removed that time. It only took 30 years for someone to make this poster a reality.