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Movie studios will do just about anything to get your money.
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00:00When looking forward to a film, everyone handles it a little differently.
00:03Some of us want to soak up all the anticipation by watching every second of footage that gets released,
00:08and some of us avoid the trailers as much as possible so we can go in completely clear of expectation.
00:13That being said, whether you head to the cinema or boot up a movie on your streaming service of choice,
00:17you can't avoid at least seeing some kind of marketing image.
00:21Over the years, many films have outright fibbed about their content to us in order to get us to part with our cash.
00:26Sometimes it's a sneaky little misdirection, and other times they get away with bold-faced lies.
00:31The film posters on this list made promises they couldn't keep, and you'll never get your money back because of it.
00:36I'm SciForWhatCulture.com, and these are 10 movie posters that lied to your face.
00:41Number 10, X-Men 3, The Last Stand.
00:44Before the MCU kicked open the door for any combination of Marvel characters to grace our screens, we had the X-Men trilogy.
00:51Getting excited for a new X-Men film was kind of like waiting for a new Pokemon game to come out.
00:54What kind of new friends and enemies would we see this time?
00:58Each entry in the franchise included new mutants from the back catalogue of the comics, and The Last Stand was no different.
01:04Angel, with all of his boyish good looks and his luscious wings, was a big part of the marketing for the film,
01:08and he appears on every single poster, usually clad in the X-Men's leather uniform.
01:13It feels like Ben Foster probably only got to wear the outfit for one day, however, and that was for publicity shoots,
01:18as during the runtime of the film, Angel never dons the outfit.
01:21Promising a new member of the X-Men team on the poster does not reflect the movie's course,
01:25as Angel's story is pretty much its own thing entirely.
01:29Additionally, the poster also features Cyclops all suited up and ready to fight.
01:33Infamously, this is a blatant red herring, considering the fact that he's killed off unceremoniously 25 minutes into the picture.
01:40Justice for Scott Summers.
01:42Number 9, Frogs.
01:43Frogs is a totally bizarre 1970s eco-terror film about wildlife photographer Pinkett Smith,
01:49as portrayed by Sam Elliott, who, whilst exploring a swamp, gets wrapped up in the strangest series of events.
01:55Taken to a private island, numerous animal-based murders occur, and landowner Jason refuses to let Pinkett leave.
02:02The poster for the film and the title are actually both misleading,
02:05as whilst frogs are certainly mentioned, the marketing for the movie seems to imply a much greater role than they get.
02:11Looking at the poster, you'd assume that this was a movie about giant man-eating frogs.
02:15Not only are the frogs totally normal-sized, they're also not all that important an aspect.
02:20There's a lot of random deaths in the film caused by any number of animals,
02:23lizards, tarantulas, eagles, snakes, leeches,
02:26but the frogs don't really get involved until the final moment.
02:29And do they eat someone? No.
02:31Their en masse appearance seems to cause death by heart attack.
02:34Most likely, this is a case of an artist being given the film's name and genre,
02:38and then just coming up with something based on that alone.
02:40It's a totally nonsense movie at the best of times,
02:43so perhaps the poster is suitable for being equally ridiculous,
02:46but if you promise giant man-eating amphibians, then you better deliver.
02:50Number 8. My Sister's Keeper
02:52If your initial expectations for My Sister's Keeper are bright, warm, and sunny,
02:56then you have the poster to thank for that.
02:58Cameron Diaz is smiling, Abigail Breslin is smiling,
03:01and Sofia Vasileva is innocently blowing bubbles.
03:04This looks like a heartfelt and wholesome romp about a happy family.
03:08In truth, these characters have very little to smile or blow bubbles about.
03:11The story follows a rather twisted family dynamic.
03:15Diaz's Sarah and her partner have their second daughter, Anna,
03:17expressly for the purpose of harvesting her organs
03:20to sustain the life of her leukemia-ridden older sister, Kate.
03:23Terminal illnesses, legal clashes between family members,
03:26and mortality are not the subjects that come to mind when you see this poster.
03:30Let's just say it's not exactly the kind of thing you'd pick for a cosy night at home,
03:34or a family film gathering.
03:36What's promoted as a touching drama is actually a pretty harrowing affair,
03:40and Sarah forcing her daughter into medical servitude
03:42is some pretty god-awful supervillain stuff.
03:45My Sister's Keeper is a fairly melodramatic tale
03:47that involves a lot of shouting and crying.
03:50There's not a lot of smiling or frolicking to be had,
03:52despite what the poster seems to imply.
03:54Number seven, Reign of Fire.
03:572002's sci-fi fantasy flick, Reign of Fire,
03:59should have been a slam dunk.
04:00The concept of a world under siege from once hibernating dragons
04:03was exciting, and a fresh evolution of the dinosaur mania
04:06that had gripped the world following Jurassic Park.
04:09Its star-studded cast includes Christian Bale,
04:12Matthew McConaughey, and Gerard Butler, just to name a few.
04:15You could sell the picture today on that alone.
04:18Still, it never quite succeeded in the way that it should have,
04:20and some didn't enjoy the film's grey and grim Mad Max-style post-apocalypse wasteland.
04:25It probably didn't help that the marketing for the film was a lot brighter,
04:28and had some frankly fantastic visuals that don't show up in the movie.
04:31What makes this poster worse than being a lie
04:33is that it looks, quite intentionally of course,
04:35way more awesome than the actual movie is.
04:38With dragons flying over a burning modern-day London,
04:40it seems to imply that the setting of the picture
04:42is during the war between humanity and giant lizard,
04:45rather than, in truth, set decades after the fact.
04:49Of course, such a thing would have been a budgetary nightmare,
04:51but marketing your movie like it's the next big CGI blockbuster
04:54when it doesn't have the chops to back it up
04:56makes this a pretty big misdirect.
04:58Number six, Bridge on the River Kwai.
05:00This 1957 war drama is widely considered one of the best films of all time.
05:05It certainly has the accolades to back it up,
05:07being the highest-grossing movie of its year,
05:10winning seven Academy Awards,
05:12and being now preserved in the National Film Registry
05:14for its significance to Western culture.
05:17That being said, for all that it did well,
05:18there were some very weird missteps along the way.
05:21Bridge on the River Kwai had a few promotional posters,
05:24but one that stands out is the one with William Holden's character,
05:26Commander Shears,
05:27standing tall with the eponymous bridge in the background.
05:29Holden has fur spilling on all of the film's marketing,
05:32but what makes this strange is that he's arguably not the picture's main character.
05:37A pre-Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness plays Colonel Nicholson,
05:40whose character is at the heart of the bridge,
05:42and who has the most important arc of the story.
05:45A British soldier who becomes obsessed with his labour to build the bridge,
05:48Nicholson ends the film by taking down his work in a final act of defiance.
05:53Colonel Nicholson is the beating heart of the piece,
05:55so this poster seemingly saying it's all about Commander Shears' thrilling heroics is all wrong.
06:01Number 5, Mortal Kombat 2021.
06:03The original Mortal Kombat film might be B-movie nonsense,
06:06but it did give us the adored dancefloor-filling techno theme tune,
06:09so we have to thank it for that.
06:11Mostly, it was gloriously stupid fun,
06:13with the highlight being the fight scenes with the series mainstays Sub-Zero and Scorpion,
06:17even if they are brief.
06:18It felt as though the 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat had this in mind then,
06:23when the marketing for the film put these two characters in pretty prominent positions.
06:27The movie's poster was literally just these two faces and nothing more,
06:30and the trailer seemed to back up the idea that this would be a colour-coded ninja-focused affair.
06:35In actuality, whilst it is the best scene in the film,
06:37Sub-Zero and Scorpion's interactions are contained to the first 15 minutes,
06:41and they're not even in their classic garb.
06:43After the fight concludes, we jump forward to the present day.
06:46Sub-Zero acts as an ongoing antagonist of the flick,
06:49but Scorpion only returns in the final showdown in a rather muted fashion.
06:53Mortal Kombat released during the COVID-19 pandemic,
06:56and asked for a pretty hefty rental fee, especially here in the UK.
07:00How did it get you to part with your cash?
07:02Promising you a story focused on two characters that barely interacted in the film.
07:06Number 4. Camp Hell
07:08There's definitely something wrong with knowingly making a poster
07:11to pull the wool over your audience's eyes to make a quick buck.
07:14It's bad when it's a big studio, but it's somehow worse when it's a group of small filmmakers
07:18trying to ride the coattails of a kind favour.
07:21Camp Hell is a 2010 horror film that explores the clash of religious faith and sinful urges.
07:26It's generally regarded as of middling quality, and a pretty pointless movie to watch.
07:31More infamous than anything about the film itself is the way that Jesse Eisenberg reacted to being on the poster.
07:36To help sell the film, Eisenberg agreed to appear in a cameo for a reduced fee
07:40as a favour to friends of the production.
07:42Even as the most successful actor in the film's runtime, especially off the back of the social network,
07:47he didn't anticipate that the poster for Camp Hell would be nothing more than just his floating head.
07:52In June 2012, the actor won a preliminary court case suing Lionsgate and Grindstone Entertainment for misrepresentation.
07:59He didn't want to be part of the charade when he knew full well he only had a brief appearance
08:03that was shot in less than a day.
08:05Eisenberg earned $3 million in damages, which is more than the movie's budget,
08:09going to show that, like crime, telling lies doesn't pay.
08:13Number 3, Escape from New York.
08:15Escape from New York is the tale of a walled-in Manhattan prison
08:18and the mission of one man, Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken,
08:21as he ventures inside to save the United States President.
08:24The film's poster depicts Snake and company seemingly tried to escape a riot,
08:28with the head of the Statue of Liberty lying prone in a random Manhattan street.
08:32It's famous for multiple reasons.
08:34First of all, it's a really cool piece of art and the kind of thing you'd frame and hang on your wall.
08:39Secondly, it doesn't reflect a scene in the film.
08:41It's all made up.
08:42There is exactly one moment where we see old Libby and that's near the start of the movie.
08:47Fun fact, this is the only part of Escape from New York actually shot in New York.
08:51At no point does the statue ever come back into things and naturally, of course, she doesn't get beheaded either.
08:56Come to think of it, considering she's way offshore,
08:58how exactly would the Statue of Liberty's head end up in a random street anyway?
09:02It's certainly a really cool image, but it badly misrepresents the film.
09:06If you were waiting to see that crazy action sequence, you were going to wind up disappointed.
09:11Number 2, Dracula 3000
09:13Dracula 2000 is an edgy and altogether awful noughties revamp of Bram Stoker's classic tale,
09:19so why anyone would want to pay homage to it by creating a film called Dracula 3000 is beyond comprehension.
09:26At least it's faithful in that, like Dracula 2000, there are also almost zero redeemable qualities in its runtime.
09:32Set aboard a spaceship 1,000 years in the future,
09:35cyborg Aurora and vampire slayer descendant Abraham Van Helsing must fight off Count Orlok and stop him from getting to Earth.
09:41The vampires of the film look exactly like the most low-budget expectation of a vampire as possible.
09:47Red contacts, fake fangs popped in over the teeth, impractical collars.
09:51So what the heck is that thing on the poster?
09:53Clearly trying to evoke the futuristic feel and going way too far with it,
09:57it badly misrepresents the film and promises a lot more than it can deliver.
10:01Some sort of cyborg-vampire hybrid would have actually given this flick something interesting,
10:05and it definitely gets the mind turning over way more than the movie deserves.
10:09As it stands, the vampires in Dracula 3000 are boring,
10:12which is at least perfectly in tune with the story, directing, casting and everything else.
10:17But hey, at least it's got that crazy poster.
10:20Number 1. Terminator 3 – Rise of the Machines
10:23At one point, Terminator 3 was considered the worst of the Terminator films,
10:27but then a few more came along that got progressively shoddier.
10:30The franchise had once been a clever sci-fi thriller,
10:32so many disliked Terminator 3 – Rise of the Machines,
10:35taking a bigger step than before into ultimately thoughtless action.
10:39Schwarzenegger returns to the main role of the T-800,
10:41and his duty of protecting John and Sarah Connor continues against the new threat of Christiana Lachen's T-X.
10:48What makes matters worse is that before the film's release,
10:50the poster seemed to show so much more potential than the finished product.
10:54Under Arnie's cold and blank expression was what appeared to be an army of Terminators with the T-X at the forefront.
10:59This ensemble of robots, and the subtitle, Rise of the Machines,
11:04seemed to imply that the film would finally be an all-out war between humanity and Cyberdyne's creations.
11:10What we got instead was a watered-down version of Terminator 2 that put the franchise to bed for six years.
11:16Terminator Salvation finally gave us a look at the mass-scale clash of human and cyborg,
11:20but, ironically, its poor reception made Terminator 3 a much easier pill to swallow by comparison.
11:26And that's the list.
11:27Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below,
11:30and any other movies that you can think of that are completely different from the poster.
11:35Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe, and hit that notification bell.
11:40I've been Cy for WhatCulture, and have a good week.
11:43I've been Cy for WhatCulture, and have a good week.
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