10 Movie Posters That Lied To Your Face
Movie studios will do just about anything to get your money.
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00:00 When looking forward to a film, everyone handles it a little differently. Some of us want to soak
00:04 up all the anticipation by watching every second of footage that gets released, and some of us
00:08 avoid the trailers as much as possible so we can go in completely clear of expectation. That being
00:13 said, whether you head to the cinema or boot up a movie on your streaming service of choice,
00:17 you can't avoid at least seeing some kind of marketing image. Over the years, many films have
00:22 outright fibbed about their content to us in order to get us to part with our cash. Sometimes it's a
00:27 sneaky little misdirection, and other times they get away with bold-faced lies. The film posters on
00:32 this list made promises they couldn't keep, and you'll never get your money back because of it.
00:36 I'm SciForWhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Movie Posters That Lied To Your Face.
00:41 10. X-Men 3 The Last Stand
00:44 Before the MCU kicked open the door for any combination of Marvel characters to grace our
00:48 screens, we had the X-Men trilogy. Getting excited for a new X-Men film was kind of like waiting for
00:53 a new Pokemon game to come out. What kind of new friends and enemies would we see this time?
00:57 Each entry in the franchise included new mutants from the back catalogue of the comics,
01:01 and The Last Stand was no different. Angel, with all of his boyish good looks and his luscious
01:06 wings, was a big part of the marketing for the film, and he appears on every single poster,
01:10 usually clad in the X-Men's leather uniform. It feels like Ben Foster probably only got to wear
01:15 the outfit for one day, however, and that was for publicity shoots, as during the runtime of the
01:19 film, Angel never dons the outfit. Promising a new member of the X-Men team on the poster does
01:24 not reflect the movie's course, as Angel's story is pretty much its own thing entirely.
01:29 Additionally, the poster also features Cyclops all suited up and ready to fight.
01:33 Infamously, this is a blatant red herring, considering the fact that he's killed off
01:36 unceremoniously 25 minutes into the picture. Justice for Scott Summers!
01:41 9. Frogs Frogs is a totally bizarre 1970s eco-terror
01:46 film about wildlife photographer Pinkett Smith, as portrayed by Sam Elliott, who, whilst exploring a
01:51 swamp, gets wrapped up in the strangest series of events. Taken to a private island, numerous
01:57 animal-based murders occur, and landowner Jason refuses to let Pinkett leave. The poster for the
02:02 film and the title are actually both misleading, as whilst frogs are certainly mentioned, the
02:07 marketing for the movie seems to imply a much greater role than they get. Looking at the poster,
02:11 you'd assume that this was a movie about giant, man-eating frogs. Not only are the frogs totally
02:16 normal-sized, they're also not all that important an aspect. There's a lot of random deaths in the
02:21 film caused by any number of animals - lizards, tarantulas, eagles, snakes, leeches - but the
02:26 frogs don't really get involved until the final moment. And do they eat someone? No,
02:31 their en masse appearance seems to cause death by heart attack. Most likely, this is a case of an
02:35 artist being given the film's name and genre, and then just coming up with something based on that
02:40 alone. It's a totally nonsense movie at the best of times, so perhaps the poster is suitable for
02:44 being equally ridiculous, but if you promise giant, man-eating amphibians, then you better deliver.
02:50 8. My Sister's Keeper If your initial expectations for
02:53 My Sister's Keeper are bright, warm and sunny, then you have the poster to thank for that.
02:58 Cameron Diaz is smiling, Abigail Breslin is smiling, and Sofia Vasileva is innocently
03:03 blowing bubbles. This looks like a heartfelt and wholesome romp about a happy family.
03:08 In truth, these characters have very little to smile or blow bubbles about. The story follows
03:12 a rather twisted family dynamic. Diaz's Sara and her partner have their second daughter Anna
03:17 expressly for the purpose of harvesting her organs to sustain the life of her leukemia-ridden older
03:22 sister Kate. Terminal illnesses, legal clashes between family members and mortality are not
03:27 the subjects that come to mind when you see this poster. Let's just say it's not exactly the kind
03:32 of thing you'd pick for a cosy night at home or a family film gathering. What's promoted as a
03:37 touching drama is actually a pretty harrowing affair, and Sara forcing her daughter into
03:41 medical servitude is some pretty god-awful supervillain stuff. My Sister's Keeper is a
03:46 fairly melodramatic tale that involves a lot of shouting and crying. There's not a lot of smiling
03:50 or frolicking to be had, despite what the poster seems to imply.
03:54 7. Reign of Fire
03:56 2002's sci-fi fantasy flick Reign of Fire should have been a slam dunk. The concept of a world
04:01 under siege from once-hibernating dragons was exciting and a fresh evolution of the dinosaur
04:06 mania that had gripped the world following Jurassic Park. Its star-studded cast includes
04:10 Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey and Gerard Butler, just to name a few. You could sell the
04:15 picture today on that alone. Still, it never quite succeeded in the way that it should have,
04:20 and some didn't enjoy the film's grey and grim Mad Max-style post-apocalypse wasteland. It probably
04:25 didn't help that the marketing for the film was a lot brighter and had some frankly fantastic
04:29 visuals that don't show up in the movie. What makes this poster worse than being a lie is that
04:34 it looks, quite intentionally of course, way more awesome than the actual movie is. With dragons
04:38 flying over a burning modern-day London, it seems to imply that the setting of the picture is during
04:43 the war between humanity and Giant Lizard, rather than, in truth, set decades after the fact. Of
04:49 course, such a thing would have been a budgetary nightmare, but marketing your movie like it's
04:52 the next big CGI blockbuster when it doesn't have the chops to back it up makes this a pretty big
04:57 misdirect. 6. Bridge on the River Kwai
05:00 This 1957 war drama is widely considered one of the best films of all time. It certainly has the
05:06 accolades to back it up, being the highest grossing movie of its year, winning 7 Academy Awards,
05:11 and being now preserved in the National Film Registry for its significance to western culture.
05:16 That being said, for all that it did well, there were some very weird missteps along the way.
05:21 Bridge on the River Kwai had a few promotional posters, but one that stands out is the one with
05:25 William Holden's character, Commander Shears, standing tall with the eponymous bridge in the
05:29 background. Holden has first billing on all of the film's marketing, but what makes this strange is
05:33 that he's arguably not the picture's main character. A pre-Obi-Wan Kenobi Sir Alec Guinness
05:39 plays Colonel Nicholson, whose character is at the heart of the bridge and who has the most
05:43 important arc of the story. A British soldier who becomes obsessed with his labour to build the
05:48 bridge, Nicholson ends the film by taking down his work in a final act of defiance. Colonel Nicholson
05:54 is the beating heart of the piece, so this poster seemingly saying it's all about Commander Shears'
05:58 thrilling heroics is all wrong. 5. Mortal Kombat 2021
06:03 The original Mortal Kombat film might be B-movie nonsense, but it did give us the adored dance
06:08 floor-filling techno theme tune, so we have to thank it for that. Mostly, it was gloriously
06:12 stupid fun, with the highlight being the fight scenes with the series' mainstays Sub-Zero
06:16 and Scorpion, even if they are brief. It felt as though the 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat had this
06:22 in mind then when the marketing for the film put these two characters in pretty prominent positions.
06:27 The movie's poster was literally just these two faces and nothing more, and the trailer seemed to
06:31 back up the idea that this would be a colour-coded ninja-focused affair. In actuality, whilst it is
06:36 the best scene in the film, Sub-Zero and Scorpion's interactions are contained to the first 15 minutes
06:41 and they're not even in their classic garb. After the fight concludes, we jump forward to the present
06:45 day. Sub-Zero acts as an ongoing antagonist of the flick, but Scorpion only returns in the final
06:50 showdown in a rather muted fashion. Mortal Kombat released during the COVID-19 pandemic and asked
06:56 for a pretty hefty rental fee, especially here in the UK. How did it get you to part with your cash?
07:01 Promising you a story focused on two characters that barely interacted in the film.
07:06 4. Camp Hell There's definitely something wrong with
07:10 knowingly making a poster to pull the wool over your audience's eyes to make a quick buck. It's
07:14 bad when it's a big studio, but it's somehow worse when it's a group of small filmmakers trying to
07:19 ride the coattails of a kind favour. Camp Hell is a 2010 horror film that explores the clash of
07:24 religious faith and sinful urges. It's generally regarded as of middling quality and a pretty
07:29 pointless movie to watch. More infamous than anything about the film itself is the way that
07:34 Jesse Eisenberg reacted to being on the poster. To help sell the film, Eisenberg agreed to appear
07:38 in a cameo for a reduced fee as a favour to friends of the production. Even as the most
07:43 successful actor in the film's runtime, especially off the back of the social network, he didn't
07:47 anticipate that the poster for Camp Hell would be nothing more than just his floating head.
07:52 In June 2012, the actor won a preliminary court case suing Lionsgate and Grindstone Entertainment
07:57 for misrepresentation. He didn't want to be part of the charade when he knew full well he
08:01 only had a brief appearance that was shot in less than a day. Eisenberg earned $3 million in damages,
08:07 which is more than the movie's budget, going to show that, like crime, telling lies doesn't pay.
08:13 3. Escape from New York Escape from New York is the tale of a
08:17 walled-in Manhattan prison and the mission of one man, Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken, as he ventures
08:21 inside to save the United States President. The film's poster depicts Snake and company
08:26 seemingly trying to escape a riot, with the head of the Statue of Liberty lying prone in a random
08:31 Manhattan street. It's famous for multiple reasons. First of all, it's a really cool piece of art and
08:36 the kind of thing you'd frame and hang on your wall. Secondly, it doesn't reflect a scene in the
08:40 film - it's all made up. There is exactly one moment where we see old Libby and that's near
08:45 the start of the movie. Fun fact, this is the only part of Escape from New York actually shot in New
08:50 York. At no point does the statue ever come back into things and naturally, of course, she doesn't
08:54 get beheaded either. Come to think of it, considering she's way offshore, how exactly
08:59 would the Statue of Liberty's head end up in a random street anyway? It's certainly a really cool
09:03 image, but it badly misrepresents the film. If you were waiting to see that crazy action sequence,
09:08 you were going to wind up disappointed. 2. Dracula 3000
09:13 Dracula 2000 is an edgy and altogether awful noughties revamp of Bram Stoker's classic tale.
09:19 So why anyone would want to pay homage to it by creating a film called Dracula 3000 is beyond
09:24 comprehension. At least it's faithful in that, like Dracula 2000, there are also almost zero
09:30 redeemable qualities in its runtime. Set aboard a spaceship 1,000 years in the future, cyborg Aurora
09:35 and vampire slayer descendant Abraham Van Helsing must fight off Count Orlok and stop him from
09:40 getting to Earth. The vampires of the film look exactly like the most low-budget expectation of
09:45 a vampire as possible. Red contacts, fake fangs popped in over the teeth, impractical collars.
09:51 So what the heck is that thing on the poster? Clearly trying to evoke the futuristic feel and
09:56 going way too far with it, it badly misrepresents the film and promises a lot more than it can
10:00 deliver. Some sort of cyborg vampire hybrid would have actually given this flick something
10:05 interesting and it definitely gets the mind turning over way more than the movie deserves.
10:09 As it stands, the vampires in Dracula 3000 are boring, which is at least perfectly in
10:13 tune with the story, directing, casting and everything else. But hey, at least it's got
10:18 that crazy poster. Number 1 - Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines
10:23 At one point, Terminator 3 was considered the worst of the Terminator films, but then a few
10:27 more came along that got progressively shoddier. The franchise had once been a clever sci-fi
10:32 thriller, so many disliked Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines, taking a bigger step than before
10:37 into ultimately thoughtless action. Schwarzenegger returns to the main role of the T-800 and his
10:41 duty of protecting John and Sarah Connor continues against the new threat of Christiana Loughan's T-X.
10:48 What makes matters worse is that before the film's release, the poster seemed to show
10:51 so much more potential than the finished product. Under Arnie's cold and blank expression was what
10:56 appeared to be an army of Terminators with the T-X at the forefront. This ensemble of robots,
11:01 and the subtitle 'Rise of the Machines' seemed to imply that the film would finally be an all-out
11:06 war between humanity and Cyberdyne's creations. What we got instead was a watered-down version
11:12 of Terminator 2 that put the franchise to bed for six years. Terminator Salvation finally gave us a
11:18 look at the mass-scale clash of human and cyborg, but ironically, its poor reception made Terminator
11:23 3 a much easier pill to swallow by comparison. And that's the list. Let us know what you thought
11:28 of this video down in the comments below and any other movies that you can think of that are
11:32 completely different from the poster. Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
11:37 subscribe and hit that notification bell. I've been Sy for WhatCulture and have a good week.