Edge of Tomorrow (2014) isn’t a generic sci-fi vehicle for Tom Cruise’s invincible action star persona, but a high-concept film that instead comically subverts it, casting the actor as a coward fated to perish over and over and over in a Groundhog Day-like time loop. Not that the film’s marketing made any of this clear. Likewise, Jennifer’s Body (2009) isn’t a trashy horny fantasy, as the film’s promotional materials built around Megan Fox’s pinup status would have you believe, but an incisive feminist thriller that preceded the #MeToo movement. And Drive (2011) isn’t a Fast & Furious-style action thriller, as one Michigan resident suing the distributor for its “misleading trailer” found out the hard way, but a neon-noir with a near-silent Ryan Gosling.
Okay, that last one is a bit silly but it gets at the self-defeating end result of misleading movie marketing — who among us can’t relate to the bait-and-switch frustration of the movie you were expecting to see versus the movie you ended up getting? Even a great film can seem lackluster at the time just by virtue of it not being the one you were promised. It’s a feeling filmmaker Guillermo del Toro knows well, having said that in his 30-year career, he’s had “three wonderful films hampered and hobbled by misguided marketing.”
