If you grew up in the early 2000s, you probably saw a trailer for Kangaroo Jack. The trailer gives the impression that the movie is a screwball road trip comedy about two friends and their wacky, talking Kangaroo sidekick. Except it’s not that. It’s an extremely unfunny movie about two idiots escaping the mob. There’s a random kangaroo in it for like 5 minutes and he only talks during a hallucination scene that lasts less than a minute. Turns out, the producers knew that they had a stinker on their hands so they cut the movie to be PG and focus the marketing on the one positive aspect that test audiences responded to, the talking kangaroo, tricking a bunch of families into buying tickets.
What other movies had similar, deceitfully malicious marketing campaigns?
Jarhead, staring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx.
The trailers for the film pitch a story about Gyllenhaal being a young soldier learning the harsh realities of war from tough superior officer Jamie Foxx. The trailer was full of explosions and gunfire, set to the tune of Kanye West’s (2005 era, so peak Kanye) song Jesus Walks. I was expecting something like a Black Hawk Down, or maybe even a poor man’s Saving Private Ryan.
Instead the film is about Gyllenhaal wacking off in a porta potty. Or to be more generous, “Roger Ebert gave the movie three-and-a-half out of four stars, crediting it for its unique portrayal of Gulf War Marines who battled boredom and a sense of isolation rather than enemy combatants.”
Honestly that’s a good story to tell. You can argue that the trailer was designed to be misleading to show “real” war. The problem is when you pitch an action film, I want an action film.
On a related note the film had two direct to DVD sequels, both of which are just generic action war films.
I honestly think thats brilliant marketing and actually hammers home the message being told. Modern war and life in the military isn’t like what you normally see in media or what the recruiters will promise you. It’s often a boring, exhausting, lonely, massive waste of fucking time in the most hellish of environments, all punctuated by moments of high stress. Most soldiers don’t see direct action and have practically zero insight into what is going on. Why was that patch of dirt 5 miles away just bombed? Was it us who bombed it? Who fucking knows? Get back to drilling.
Sounds a little like Rambo vs Rambo sequels.