False advertising in movies

False advertising is the use of misleading, false, or unproven information to advertise movies to attract movie buffs. An example of this would be how an ad of an upcoming movie shows a promotional material of certain elements that are not present in the film (like a character who is highly promoted despite the movie reducing the character's role). That right there can be considered a hypothetical example of this practice.

In some countries, this is illegal to do, and companies and people can be fined a significant sum of money, and people involved can be arrested if this is done. If you want to see something similar, you can go to mh:crappygames:False advertising in games

Bad or average movie examples

 * 1) Fantastic Four (2015) - Many promotional items that came out of the film had elements that do not appear in the final film including the posters implying that the movie will have some action scene in a heavily ravaged and devastated city which does not happen in the movie until the final act. There are also trailers that have scenes depicting moments like The Thing jumping out of a place, Sue crying for Johnny, Reed being supervised by the army, Ben playing baseball, etc. There was even an interview saying that there would have been a relationship between Reed and Sue when it did not happen.
 * 2) Space Jam: A New Legacy - Some promotional material depicts Daffy Duck as part of the Tune Squad. While he is part of the team, he does not even play with the rest of his team members and instead becomes a coach. There is also some material suggesting that Penelope Pussycat and Marvin would have joined the Tune Squad when it did not happen. However, Marvin at least does appear in the movie despite not being a team member. Penelope? Where did she go (most likely because of Pepe's removal)? The trailers also suggest that the Looney Tunes characters would be CGI most of the time when they only get to be CGI on the basketball game. In fact, even promotional merchandise suggest that these characters are part of the Tune Squad, but the characters mentioned have entirely different roles or just flat out removed for Penelope's case.
 * 3) Thomas and the Magic Railroad -  The biggest problem with this movie and why it got hugely brought down is that the title is incredibly misleading. While Thomas is the title character in this movie and does contribute to the plot, he gets very little screen-time with only 11 minutes (and also his Friends), and only 12% of the film focuses on him. In fact, the movie could be written without him and nothing would change after all, as the movie focuses more on the human characters, both original and from Shining Time Station, rather than Thomas and his friends, this is because the test audiences thought that the audience didn't want screen time for the main characters anymore and focus more on something else.  He only serves as a plot device, not a character!
 * 4) The Lion King (2019) - The film was going to be "live-action" yet the film turns out to be a computer-animated film with photo-realistic imagery. Even Jon Favreau keeps calling it live-action before admitting that every scene is computer-animated except for the opening shot of the sun rising. Disney also refuses to call the film an animated film and just market the film as live-action.
 * 5) Pacific Rim Uprising -  In the different trailers from the film, several dialogs between the main characters imply that the Kaijus have already invaded Earth, as well as the Jaegers organization, is plotting against the world with the latter group having their own awareness rebelling against humans. What happens next? None of this happen except for the Kaijus part albeit it was pathetic. All of the trailers suggested that the Jaegers' fight with the Kaijus will be the main focus when the fight of the film lasts only 12 to 14 minutes.
 * 6) 2012 - In two trailers, there were impressions that the film will be either a horror flick or a philosophical message about life and the planet when in reality, the film is more of a mix between action and catastrophe. There are also suggestions that Harry, Charlie, Thomas, and Satnam will have leading roles when they turn out to be secondary characters. A poster for the film shows a Buddhist monk observing how the Himalayas are flooded by a giant wave of water (though this happens, the monk dies). Another poster shows Rio de Janeiro being attacked by a great flood with the Christ the Redeemer statue is set to fall on a lot of people when the scene never had importance to the story other than it does not happen in the same way that happens in the poster.
 * 7) Kangaroo Jack - Many promotional materials had the title character be focused on when he only appears about 5 out of 89 minutes. Only 3 of which were in the actual film while the other 2 were at the end of the film. The promos also imply that Kangaroo Jack stole the jacket when Louis put it on him.
 * 8) Chicken Little - Some advertisements have Morkubine Porcupine being present despite being a minor character. There is also somewhere it shows Chicken Little wearing sunglasses and different clothes despite how he rarely wears them during the film.
 * 9) Ice Age: Collision Course - In some posters, it heavily advertises Scrat in space and him wearing a spacesuit, but in the actual film, he is only seen wearing it in three scenes. There are also another misleading is that despite being heavily advertised on movie posters, neither Brooke nor Shangri Llama appear until the final act of film and even then aren't even given proper screen time and characterization.
 * 10) Transformers: The Last Knight - When it came to trailers, posters, tv spots and promotion renders, Optimus Prime has been heavily depicted with purple eyes (meaning he sided with Quintessa and being evil). Optimus Prime (sometimes coined as "Nemesis Prime" by fans) has been portrayed as the main villain in the trailers with the most notable example is him killing the Infernocons and him "fighting" the dragon-Knight while having purple eyes and in the film those exact scenes has him having blue eyes. "Nemesis Prime" doesn't appear as much until the third act.
 * 11) Minions - The film was supposed to be about how the Minions met Gru yet the film is loosely connected to the Despicable Me series aside from a few easter eggs and Gru barely appearing in the film. There are also scenes where the Minions are seen as pirates and serving an evil kind during the Medieval era as both constantly appear in merchandise and TV spots. Nither of this happen.
 * 12) Playmobil: The Movie - In the American release, the poster shows Rex Dasher in front of the poster which makes it look like he was gonna be the main character of the film. He does not appear until later on and Marla is instead the main character.
 * 13) Annie (2014) - The movie is supposed to be a remake of the 1982 film when it's barely considered its own separate film.
 * 14) Transformers: Age of Extinction - The Dinobots were very advertised in trailers and posters as a major part of the movie when they barely got any screen time and instead only appear in the final act.
 * 15) Doogal - The trailer claims that the movie was created by Butch Hartman albeit not mentioned with the line that says "From the creator of The Fairly Odd Parents" shown off. Butch however only wrote 3% of the script for the movie that appears in the final version. In the first trailer, Doogal kept his original voice but not in the actual movie.
 * 16) The Emoji Movie - Despite Poop being marketed a lot, and having plenty of merchandise. he does not get to appear that often, and only serves as a comic relief background character. The same can be said about Steven, the devil emoji.
 * 17) Mortal Kombat (2021) - The film was said to be the most gruesome film of the franchise to be released when Scorpion's Revenge had more gore than this.
 * 18) Cheaper by the Dozen - In one of the film's posters, the Baker family appears. The matter is that Sarah is seen first and then Jake, beginning to believe that Jake is older than Sarah, but in the movie is completely the other way around.
 * 19) Skyscraper (2018) - Will Sawyer being jumped and climbed for skyscrapers in the daytime has nothing to do with this movie, making that poster a bit misleading.
 * 20) Scooby-Doo - The trailers, posters, and commercials made it look like the Luna Ghost was going to be the main antagonist of the film, but he only appears briefly in the first act.
 * 21) Free Birds - The DVD cover and some promotion images show that the film takes place on the red turkey farm yet most of the film takes place in 1621. The Native American turkeys are not represented well in a lot of marketing material except for the trailers. Aside from Jenny, the rest of them don't appear in a lot of the posters, commercials, cover arts, and the back of the DVD/Blu-Ray covers.
 * 22) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul - The movie was intended to be the fourth film in the live-action series of Diary of a Wimpy kid when it's a separate film or a loose sequel due to the new cast members. Also one of the posters shows colored version of the drawings of Greg, Rodrick, the Pig, and Manny suggesting that the hand-drawn segments would give the characters some color when the segments appear to be black and white just like in the books. the UK version of the DVD suggests that the entire film is hand-drawn since it shows a hand-drawn version of Greg despite the entire film being live-action with the hand-drawn animation being used as brief sequences
 * 23) Ghostbusters (2016) - In the trailer, the announcement text mentions the original Ghostbusters films, but this has no connections to the original films. Not only that, the main characters aren't in the announcements and just have a police and soldier peoples. The film was also advertised as a letterbox film, but the green screen effects on the ghosts were put in 16:9 widescreen. There is even an entire scene in the 16:9 widescreen format, in a film that is supposed to be in the 2:35.1 aspect ratio.
 * 24) Escape from Planet Earth - The city (which appears in the theatrical poster and the cover of the DVD release) that the characters are in never appears in the movie.
 * 25) A Loud House Christmas - Geo appears in the poster but he does not appear in the film. For some reason, he is represented by a stock image of a hamster and another stock image of a hamster ball.
 * 26) Tom and Jerry: The Movie - Despite the poster, Tom and Jerry don't chase each other that much, and the slapstick itself occurs in rare moments. Mostly during the opening and ending is when they actually do chase each other, despite some scenes of conflict that the writers supposedly attempted to add more of to the plot, despite barely being relevant to the story. Also, despite Droopy being advertised as home video cover and poster, he barely focused and has only one dialogue in the movie.
 * 27) The Matrix Revolutions - One of the posters have Neo and Trinity wearing black suits when they barely had any screentime what they wear from the first two films. Trinity didn't get to be involved in the final battle. In addition, Trinity at very near the end of the movie and near the final battle was killed off right after they crashed landed into the building.
 * 28) Cars 2 - Despite the trailers, posters and home video case stated that Lightning McQueen is going to be main protagonist, Mater was the main protagonist in the actual movie. The Home Media reissues fixed this seen here. Also another poster shows Lightning Mcqueen and Mater behind world famous landmarks along with the racers and other characters giving the illusion of a racing film set around the world, but yet it is actually a spy film.
 * 29) Ratchet & Clank - Despite being called Ratchet & Clank with the two being the main characters, Captain Qwark of all people end up having most of his arc shown with Ratchet and Clank having almost no character development.
 * 30) Suicide Squad (2016) - The Joker was hyped in many ads regarding the movie. Those ads suggest that he would be the main antagonist when he was just a minor character.
 * 31) Mars Needs Moms - The film suggests that it's live-action when it's animated via motion capture.
 * 32) Rumble (2021) - The first trailer for the movie implied that Tentacular did have a backstory as the tattoo covered guy had tattoos that told Tentacular’s life story all over him but the actual film never revealed Tentacular’s backstory. This indicates that the writers did have a backstory planned for Tentacular but for some reason opted not to show it and instead used it as part of a character design, which is the laziest way to do a character backstory that only serves to confuse the audience. Another incident of false advertising occurs through many trailers that indicate the hat Steve will have a wrestling match against King Gorge. However the movie shows Winnie try to set Steve up for such a match only for King Gorge’s trainer to refuse to go along with it due to Gorge’s state of mind from his tentacular match.
 * 33) Fun Size - One of the posters for the movie has April Martin, Wren DeSantis' best friend, wearing a purple dress, but she never wears that outfit at any point during the film itself. On top of that, one of the DVD covers says that it's the "perfect family film", which isn't the case since the content and humor are intended for teens and adults rather than families.
 * 34) In Search of the Titanic (Tentacolino) - The entire premise is misleading as for the first title, the intial plot of finding the Titanic is shoved away for the main plot in which it involves Atlantis in a war. The alternate title is wrong as well with the titular character 'Tentacolino' who is inexplicitly named 'Odie' in that film, he is only shoved in as a minor character not the main one as implied, and that he does not appear often.
 * 35) The Ant Bully - Despite the marketing poster, DVD cover, and promotion image stated that Lucas is using the weapon, he barely use it in the actual movie.
 * 36) Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked - The poster shows that the Chipmunks are wearing holiday beach outfits, but they never actually do wear them in the movie.
 * 37) *Also, when you look closely at the main characters' faces, you can see that they lazily reused the same pose from the first two film's poster.
 * 38) Foodfight - The DVD cover shows what appears to be major food mascots in a cart and are focused on the front (Charlie Tuna, Vlasic the Stork, Twinkle the Kid and Ms. Buttersworth), but they aren't the protagonists as the real protagonists (Dex and Sunshine) are placed left behind the cart and additionally the featuring headline is also a lie as the so called featured stars don't play major roles in the story and that the tagline also states that Chef Boyardee and Chiquita Banana are in this film when they don't appear. The cover also gives a false impression of the movie's animation quality in which it's even worse than what is shown.
 * 39) The Smurfs (2011) - One of the posters has the Smurf group getting stuck in an NYC subway with commuters reacting to them trapped in, when in the actual movie, this scene doesn't involve any people seeing or noticing the Smurfs in the subway. The other posters show Papa Smurf wearing shades, but he doesn't actually wear them in the film.
 * 40) The Boss Baby: Family Business: Most Posters show Boss Baby as he is in the first film making it feel like it takes place imedlity after the first when when he is shown as a Adult in some parts of the movie & uses a potion to turn back to a baby for most of the film.
 * 41) The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild - Despite Buck being the title character, Crash and Eddie are treated as main characters even though the film keeps switching between the possum bros. and Buck. Also, a trailer suggests that Crash and Eddie went back to the lost world by falling out of a cracked mountain when they went into the same entrance from Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
 * 42) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan: The poster shows Jason Voorhees On top of New york with a Buck 120 knife, yet in the movie he doesn't use that knife and the film takes place on a cruise ship. and we don't see Manhattan until the third act.
 * 43) Some DVDs or Blu Rays of certain bad/average movies tend to claim that their movie will be good when the film itself says otherwise. In the back cover of Ice Age: Collision Course for example says that it's "the best Ice Age movie yet" when it's not. The DVDs even use certain critic reviews that are positive just to trick audiences that they are gonna see a good movie. Just look at the DVDs of films like Mars Needs Moms, The Cat in the Hat, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Norm of the North, Doogal, Super Mario Bros. (the live-action movie), God's Not Dead, Alvin and the Chipmunks tetralogy, The Smurfs duology (excluding the Lost Village), The Boss Baby duology, etc. Sometimes, the positive quotes for some bad or average movies are the same like Margie Elinor's quote from the DVD back cover of Ice Age: Collision Course uses the same one as Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip.

Good or decent movie examples

 * 1) Avengers: Infinity War - The Hulk, who was featured in many posters and trailers, was only in the movie for a few scenes.
 * 2) *It was later confirmed that Hulk would've had an arc where he became Professor Hulk during the third act of the movie, but it was scrapped in favour of a separate movie, while Professor Hulk was introduced in the sequel.
 * 3) Crimson Peak - The film was marketed as a period supernatural horror film. In reality, it is actually a gothic romance with only some horror elements.
 * 4) The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water - The trailers and posters show the CGI-live action portion of the movie, implying that the movie is at least mostly in CGI. The CGI-live action portion isn't until the third act of the movie, despite being heavily used in advertising.
 * 5) Pacific Rim - Despite how the two Jaegers, Cherno Alpha & Crimson Typhoon, were heavily marketed in posters and trailers, they barely focused for less than 5 minutes and are there just to be killed, making the both characters wasted and forgettable.
 * 6) Mh:greatestmovies:Happy Feet - While Mumble as the baby is featured on posters and DVD case, he is a teen for most of the movie, making it somewhat misleading.
 * 7) Meet the Robinsons - The poster at the top of the page gave the impression that Lizzy was a member of the Robinson family in the future when in this film, it turns out she's actually just a classmate of Lewis in the present who is only on screen for under a minute in total. Not only that, there's also a dog with glasses, but he barely appears in the film as well.
 * 8) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers - The movie poster has Michael Myers' original mask, but in the movie, his mask is revealed to be awful and is not intimidating at all.
 * 9) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 - One of the posters show Brent wearing a chicken suit, he wore it in the 24-minute mark. After that, the Cheespider removes the chicken suit off of him.
 * 10) Moana - Many promotional material and advertisements made it look like Pua the pig was going to be very involved in the plot. But he gets very little screen time in the first act.
 * 11) Godzilla (2014) - One trailer implies that Godzilla would be the film's antagonist like in the original 1954 film, but the movie portrays him as the hero who battles the MUTOs.
 * 12) Mh:greatestmovies: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: Most Posters show Hiccup living in the hidden world with Toothless & Light Fury but the hidden world only appears for a few scenes & doesn't appear much as shown here.
 * 13) Mh:greatestmovies: WALL-E: One of the Posters for the film shows M-O Along with WALL-E & EVE Riding the ship to the axion shown here. when in actual film WALL-E & EVE (While Sleep) is riding to the Axiom as M-O is living in the axiom
 * 14) Up - The Blu-ray Reissue & 4K UHD Release shows Russell thinking he's the main protagonist when it's actually Carl Fredrickson Seen here
 * 15) The Angry Birds Movie 2 - On the poster, the main characters (Red, Chuck, Bomb, Leonard, Sliver, Courtney, Gary and the Hatchlings) have been frozen by Zeta, but this never happens in the actual movie, probably because since Zeta's plan to destroy the both Bird and Pig island with the giant ice ball weapon.
 * 16) Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Despite all the interviews stating how cool Captain Phasma was going to be, she only appears in a couple of scenes, during which she respectively doesn't do much, gets beaten up by Chewbacca, turns off the shields of Starkiller Base despite having no reason to believe that Han, Finn and Chewie are going to release her if she helps them, and then is implied to have been unceremoniously thrown in a trash compactor. Poe Dameron was also heavily promoted as a main character, fueling speculation that he would be part of a new trio of heroes. While he's a major supporting character, he's ultimately just that—a supporting character. He vanishes for the entire middle act after getting separated from Finn on Jakku, and he spends the final act running interference with a Resistance X-Wing squadron while the main characters storm Starkiller Base to rescue Rey and confront Kylo Ren. Unlike Phasma, his role does get greatly expanded in The Last Jedi. Lor San Tekka was also highly expected to be a prominent character, but he's killed by Kylo Ren within the first five minutes of the film. There is also Luke Skywalker, bizarrely. He frequently got the not appearing in the trailer treatment in promotional material, but his presence in the movie was played up by Disney and Mark Hamill received second billing (Harrison Ford got first). In the finished film, he only appears in two very brief scenes, getting no lines and less than a minute of screentime.
 * 17) Toy Story 3 - One poster for the film features Stinky Pete, the main antagonist from Toy Story 2, leaning on the film's "3", but he doesn't appear in the film at all nor is he mentioned.
 * 18) Ice Age - Scrat appears on most covers but he appears in some scenes
 * 19) Enchanted - Narissa Live Action form is shown on the cover and on trailers but her Live Action form makes an appearance near the end of movie with her animated appearance having more screentime.
 * 20) Encanto - Promotional material suggests that the main family would play a huge role. While they do have roles, the only ones with bigger roles are Mirabel, Bruno, and Abuela as they got more screen time. In most trailers, Mirabel was shown to go on an adventure with a toucan as a partner to a place that can provide clues to save the house and its magic, but in the film, she only went deeper by herself into unknown parts of the house which contain several paths that include clues to find Bruno who was missing.
 * 1) Encanto - Promotional material suggests that the main family would play a huge role. While they do have roles, the only ones with bigger roles are Mirabel, Bruno, and Abuela as they got more screen time. In most trailers, Mirabel was shown to go on an adventure with a toucan as a partner to a place that can provide clues to save the house and its magic, but in the film, she only went deeper by herself into unknown parts of the house which contain several paths that include clues to find Bruno who was missing.

An Overall Example

 * 1) Every time a film gets delayed, there was earlier promotional material/trailers where it shows the original release date yet the crew behind the film decided to change the date. This could be justified because usually, movie delays do happen for a reason.

Why This Practice Sucks

 * 1) Its very obvious that hyping a certain scene or character in your promotional material and then having it at last minute or cut out entirely is a dissapointing move for the audience once they have watched the film. Its just a gimmick to make people watch the film longer or just to entice them to try seeing it.
 * 2) It can spoil certain scenes or ruin scenes from showing the thing too early in a trailer or poster. If a certain character or scene becomes highlighted but is different than expected, it may either ruin the surprises or potential twists the story has.
 * 3) Audiences may become confused of the intial tone of the film if the poster depicts them in a misleading way. As an example: One of Cars 2's posters shows some landmarks indicating the film is about a worldwide race but its actually a spy film.

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