Editorial #7 - My Thoughts on Marketing Misdirects
**WARNING** MAJOR SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR AND DEADPOOL 2 AHEAD. READER DISCRETION ADVISED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
As more and more big budget tentpole films emerge, as do their marketing campaigns, we find ourselves in a conundrum; with more and more studios deciding to use their marketing to trick fans and avoid spoilers, should they do this? And more importantly, what consequences do they have on their films?
It all started last October, October of 2017, when Avengers: Infinity War released their first trailer. The only thing is, none of us had any idea because we all saw the trailer, we lost our minds when we saw the final shot (above) with the Avengers charging through the woods of Wakanda.
Unbeknownst to ANY OF US, this shot was a complete misdirect, and was NOWHERE in the film. Nowhere.
Perhaps it was edited out? Not likely. Here's why.
As more and more big budget tentpole films emerge, as do their marketing campaigns, we find ourselves in a conundrum; with more and more studios deciding to use their marketing to trick fans and avoid spoilers, should they do this? And more importantly, what consequences do they have on their films?
It all started last October, October of 2017, when Avengers: Infinity War released their first trailer. The only thing is, none of us had any idea because we all saw the trailer, we lost our minds when we saw the final shot (above) with the Avengers charging through the woods of Wakanda.
Unbeknownst to ANY OF US, this shot was a complete misdirect, and was NOWHERE in the film. Nowhere.
Perhaps it was edited out? Not likely. Here's why.
Remember how throughout the entire film, Hulk did not want to come out? There were scenes all throughout the film that had Bruce Banner fighting with his alter ego to bring him out. This wasn't a last minute change. If this was a last minute change, then you would be forgiven in thinking that if this was a last minute change, this shot in the trailer was one that was shot early, but cut. But it wasn't.
Kevin Feige, along with Mark Ruffalo, have explicitly stated that Bruce Banner/Hulk has a definite three-movie-arc starting with Thor: Ragnarok and ending with Avengers 4. This second-installment, Avengers: Infinity War, had Hulk struggling with himself, and I'm sure that Avengers 4 will have these issues resolved somehow and Hulk will come back. But going back to the original point, Hulk was not meant to be in the film at all.
So that trailer, above, was fake all along, and Marvel knew it from the start, the Russos knew it from the start, and Kevin Feige knew it from the start. Additionally, there were other shots throughout the trailers that only showed Thanos with 2 infinity stones, when in reality, he had 4 or 5.
So this begs the question; is this okay? Should movie studios be doing this?
The answer, in my humble opinion, is no, but not a definite, concrete no.
The whole idea of a trailer is to get you excited for a particular movie. The trailer is supposed to use whatever footage is available to promote the upcoming feature film. The trailer can use whatever tone that they want, as evidenced with a film such as Suicide Squad. If you want to see a film with two trailers that are so drastically different from each other, watch the first and second trailer for Suicide Squad. The first trailer promised a dark, gritty, real-world kind of film, while the second brought forth a campy, edgy, light-hearted tone with Bohemian Rhapsody.
So technically, Marvel was not wrong in putting this scene in the trailer, because yes, technically, it was promoting the film using some footage that existed. HOWEVER, I believe that they shouldn't have simply because it was selling a movie that we did not get. And this is only a minor example; think about it - when you see a trailer like this, you expect Hulk, simply because you see Hulk. So when the Battle of Wakanda comes around, and you begin to realize that Hulk isn't coming, you see that this trailer shot is a fake. And then you begin to realize that the trailers lied about a great deal many things.
Look at Deadpool 2. They used their trailer to market this idea of X-Force, only to kill them all off in the middle of the film. And that's OKAY, simply because it wasn't selling the film to be X-Force centric - it was setting up a joke. This is a different scenario because the Avengers trailer was DELIBERATELY tricking audience members with fake shots. The Deadpool trailer was using existing shots to manipulate the audience into thinking one thing.
I believe that there is a concrete difference with manipulating the tone of a trailer versus inserting shots into the trailer that aren't in the final film. The problem with the first option is not that you sell a false movie, but perhaps you sell a better movie than the one that was actually delivered. For example, in the case of Iron Man 3, I loved the tones of the trailers far more than I liked the tone of the actual movie, but that was in no way the fault of the filmmakers; that was just the trailer editors (who are often separate from the filmmakers) making the film (using existing footage) look like something that it's not, and coincidentally, we got a better trailer (in my opinion) for Iron Man 3 than the actual film.
So in the end, yes it's up to the film makers to do whatever they want and make whatever movie they want, but, like Infinity War and the Russos, it's important to realize that we expect a certain level of certainty when we see a trailer. We expect a certain level of finality - so when they give us false information deliberately, it causes us to wonder: what can we trust?
Kevin Feige, along with Mark Ruffalo, have explicitly stated that Bruce Banner/Hulk has a definite three-movie-arc starting with Thor: Ragnarok and ending with Avengers 4. This second-installment, Avengers: Infinity War, had Hulk struggling with himself, and I'm sure that Avengers 4 will have these issues resolved somehow and Hulk will come back. But going back to the original point, Hulk was not meant to be in the film at all.
So that trailer, above, was fake all along, and Marvel knew it from the start, the Russos knew it from the start, and Kevin Feige knew it from the start. Additionally, there were other shots throughout the trailers that only showed Thanos with 2 infinity stones, when in reality, he had 4 or 5.
So this begs the question; is this okay? Should movie studios be doing this?
The answer, in my humble opinion, is no, but not a definite, concrete no.
The whole idea of a trailer is to get you excited for a particular movie. The trailer is supposed to use whatever footage is available to promote the upcoming feature film. The trailer can use whatever tone that they want, as evidenced with a film such as Suicide Squad. If you want to see a film with two trailers that are so drastically different from each other, watch the first and second trailer for Suicide Squad. The first trailer promised a dark, gritty, real-world kind of film, while the second brought forth a campy, edgy, light-hearted tone with Bohemian Rhapsody.
So technically, Marvel was not wrong in putting this scene in the trailer, because yes, technically, it was promoting the film using some footage that existed. HOWEVER, I believe that they shouldn't have simply because it was selling a movie that we did not get. And this is only a minor example; think about it - when you see a trailer like this, you expect Hulk, simply because you see Hulk. So when the Battle of Wakanda comes around, and you begin to realize that Hulk isn't coming, you see that this trailer shot is a fake. And then you begin to realize that the trailers lied about a great deal many things.
Look at Deadpool 2. They used their trailer to market this idea of X-Force, only to kill them all off in the middle of the film. And that's OKAY, simply because it wasn't selling the film to be X-Force centric - it was setting up a joke. This is a different scenario because the Avengers trailer was DELIBERATELY tricking audience members with fake shots. The Deadpool trailer was using existing shots to manipulate the audience into thinking one thing.
I believe that there is a concrete difference with manipulating the tone of a trailer versus inserting shots into the trailer that aren't in the final film. The problem with the first option is not that you sell a false movie, but perhaps you sell a better movie than the one that was actually delivered. For example, in the case of Iron Man 3, I loved the tones of the trailers far more than I liked the tone of the actual movie, but that was in no way the fault of the filmmakers; that was just the trailer editors (who are often separate from the filmmakers) making the film (using existing footage) look like something that it's not, and coincidentally, we got a better trailer (in my opinion) for Iron Man 3 than the actual film.
So in the end, yes it's up to the film makers to do whatever they want and make whatever movie they want, but, like Infinity War and the Russos, it's important to realize that we expect a certain level of certainty when we see a trailer. We expect a certain level of finality - so when they give us false information deliberately, it causes us to wonder: what can we trust?
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