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?
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.