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When movie posters straight-up gave everything away.
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00:00It's a common complaint among film fans that movie marketing gives way too much away,
00:05with trailers often outlining almost the entire story
00:08before audiences have even sat down to watch it for themselves.
00:11And even if you quite sensibly decide to go spoiler blackout on a film's trailers,
00:16it's always possible that even a single unavoidable poster
00:19will flat out tell you how everything ends anyway.
00:22That's certainly true of these 10 movie posters,
00:25all of which shamelessly gave the game away without a thought in the world
00:29for those who might prefer to experience the biggest and most iconic moments for themselves,
00:34totally unspoiled.
00:36A few of these posters at least got a few points for creativity,
00:39but most have been rightfully dinged for leaving little to the audience's imagination
00:44and ruining the joy of discovery in the process.
00:47Some have a few subtle elements you might not fully appreciate until you've seen the film,
00:52while others just describe the whole last plot of the movie,
00:55including its ending, in the most basic and annoying way.
00:58Either way, they're yet further proof that marketing intended to inform audiences
01:03can sometimes go way too far.
01:06And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
01:08here with 10 movie posters that spoiled everything.
01:12Number 10.
01:13The Ritual for Cabin in the Woods
01:15Most of the marketing for The Cabin in the Woods nicely played coy
01:18about the precise nature of its seemingly tropey horror movie setup.
01:23The trailer did, of course, suggest a sci-fi twist,
01:25but still kept things vague enough to be interesting.
01:28But the poster for the film's Japanese release dropped any and all pretense of preserving the big secret,
01:35by blatantly showing the underground facility which contains the various cube-like prisons
01:40containing the monsters unleashed at the end of the film.
01:42The poster makes it painfully clear that Cabin in the Woods isn't just an evil dead knockoff.
01:47It shamelessly reveals the big sci-fi conceit that isn't fully unfurled until much late in the story.
01:53Okay, sure, it doesn't quite go the whole hog and write it's part of a world-saving ritual in neon lights,
01:59but it gives more than enough context for most people who see the poster to start figuring out what's going on.
02:04Number 9.
02:05Carrie's Rampage
02:06Carrie
02:07Brian De Palma's Carrie features one of the most iconic and unforgettable endings to any horror movie.
02:13Nay, any movie period.
02:15Yet even audiences watching the film upon release in 1976 were bamboozled with posters
02:21which blatantly revealed the big third act outcome.
02:24The poster contained two pictures of Carrie,
02:27both as a smiling, beautiful prom queen and then bathed in blood,
02:31while stating that she has the power,
02:33making it abundantly clear that Carrie causes one hell of a massacre on prom night with her supernatural abilities.
02:40Even without the knowledge of the humiliation Carrie suffers at the prom,
02:44namely being soaked in pig's blood,
02:46it pretty plainly details the film's most iconic set piece and Carrie's descent into bloody vengeance.
02:51The marketing for the 2013 remake didn't fare much better either,
02:56showing Carrie covered in blood and wandering the fiery streets she'd just set ablaze.
03:01Number 8.
03:02The band goes to prison, Airheads
03:04Comedy movies are generally less susceptible to spoilers ruining the experience,
03:09but even so, the posters for 1994's cult classic comedy Airheads dropped the ball big time.
03:16The film focuses on an LA rock band who hijack a radio station in order to get their demo recording played on the air.
03:22It's a fun concept and a fondly remembered movie by audiences,
03:25though certainly not by critics, except for the fact that the main poster literally shows the trio standing in front of a police line-up.
03:33And even if you think that's still somewhat ambiguous, the tagline at the top of the poster literally reads,
03:39they were a rock and roll band that couldn't get arrested.
03:41That was before they took an entire radio station hostage.
03:45And so it's little surprise that Airheads Indeeds end with the band being arrested for their act,
03:50albeit while only serving three months for their crime and going on to finally find the success they were craving.
03:55Number 7.
03:56John Connor is a Terminator, Terminator Genisys
03:59Name a more iconic duo than the Terminator franchise and spoiling its own plot in the marketing.
04:05The fifth Terminator film, Terminator Genisys, made especially baffling pains to give away its own shocking plot twist
04:11in both the movie's later trailers and posters.
04:14The final poster pointlessly revealed that Resistance leader John Connor had somehow been turned into a villainous Terminator,
04:21with a fiery expanse showing the robotic form below his human facade.
04:26While fans who wanted to dodge spoilers could have avoided the trailer with relative ease,
04:30movie posters are basically everywhere, ensuring the spoiler-cautious were almost certainly subjected to it at some point before the movie's release.
04:38Given that this is Genisys' big reveal,
04:40it's clear that Paramount was so desperate to lure audiences in by any means necessary
04:45that they willingly gave away the film's big surprise for free.
04:49It didn't help much though, as while certainly not a box office bomb,
04:53Genisys' commercial performance was much lower than expected.
04:56Number 6.
04:57The Monster, 10 Cloverfield Lane
04:59The marketing for 10 Cloverfield Lane did a genuinely solid job of only hinting at the dangers awaiting protagonist Michelle
05:07outside of Howard Stambler's survival compound.
05:09That is, except for the movie's international poster,
05:13which flipped the bird to subtlety and just straight up revealed the film's late-game set piece.
05:18The poster shows Michelle running through a field while being pursued by a gigantic alien spacecraft,
05:23confirming that A. Michelle does indeed make it out of the compound,
05:27B. she can safely breathe the air out in the open,
05:30and C. the finale involves a fight with an alien.
05:32Even with the film having Cloverfield in the title,
05:36many went in assuming it to be a smaller-scale spin-off
05:39merely existing within the same world as Matt Reeves' 2008 found-footage film.
05:44But anyone unlucky enough to see the international poster had any and all ambiguity ripped away,
05:49ensuring they spent the entire movie anxiously anticipating the showdown they already knew was coming.
05:55Number 5. This is not a game, Ender's Game
05:58The posters and trailers for 2013's adaptation of Orson Scott Card's legendary sci-fi novel Ender's Game
06:05tried to get a little too cute for their own good, and in turn basically gave the game away.
06:11The posters proudly placed the tagline front and centre which read,
06:14While at first glance this might simply seem like a cool movie marketing quote,
06:20it actually spoils the big climactic twist that the training exercise protagonist Ender believes he is participating in
06:26is actually a very real engagement with alien combatants.
06:30Hell, even the poster that didn't include this tagline nevertheless showed off the outcome of the final battle,
06:35with the alien planet clearly being obliterated by Ender.
06:39Though many people going to see Ender's game would have been familiar with the source material,
06:43given that the book came out almost 30 years before the movie,
06:47it's also fair to say that many more likely wouldn't have.
06:50Despite the twist being surprisingly well executed,
06:53it's a shame that the marketing needlessly spelled it out in the most literal sense.
06:58Number 4. The Sniper's Identity, Phone Booth
07:01Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth is a criminally underappreciated little thriller
07:05in which Stu Shepard finds himself held hostage in a New York City phone booth by an unhinged sniper.
07:10Now, to be completely fair, if you're a fan of the TV show 24,
07:14you're probably going to figure out very early on that the sniper on the other end of the phone is voiced by Kiefer Sutherland.
07:20But if you weren't familiar with Sutherland's dulcet tones,
07:24the poster damn near clarified what the movie's villain looked like,
07:27showing a sliver of Sutherland's bespectacled face staring intensely into the distance.
07:32This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that the movie intentionally conceals the sniper's identity
07:37until the very end of the film, and even attempts to mislead viewers as to who he is.
07:43In a final failed fake-out, we're led to believe that the caller is actually a disgruntled pizza delivery guy
07:48who encountered Stu earlier in the movie.
07:50But anyone who's seen the poster with Sutherland's face on,
07:53or better yet, knows his voice, will be acutely aware they're being messed with.
07:58And so, of course, minutes later, Sutherland finally makes a brief on-screen appearance,
08:02exactly as pictured in this poster.
08:04Evidently, Fox couldn't resist the urge to feature their 24-star in the film's marketing,
08:09as infuriatingly spoilerific as it was.
08:12Number 3. A Dying Embrace, Pompeii
08:15While it's a given that audiences interested in Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii
08:19would be aware that the film would depict the titular city's destruction
08:23by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD,
08:26the outcome of its Titanic-esque love story seemed a little less certain.
08:30That was unless you took a gander at the poster,
08:33which blazantly showed gladiator Milo and his lover Cassia
08:36sharing an embrace while the volcano violently erupts behind them.
08:41While some might have assumed the poster was merely a conceptual one
08:44to synergise the film's romantic and action-based elements,
08:47lo and behold, the very end of the film indeed sees Milo and Cassia
08:51having one final kiss before being engulfed by Mount Vesuvius' pyroclastic flow.
08:56Hell, the poster even clarifies the point further with the tagline,
08:59no warning, no escape, confirming that the movie's characters
09:03won't find a way to miraculously survive and get their Hollywood happy ending.
09:07Number 2. Pete Davison is the killer, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies
09:11The poster for A24's satirical horror film Bodies, Bodies, Bodies
09:15delivers two spoilers for the price of one,
09:18albeit in a way that not everybody will realise until they've actually seen the movie.
09:22It's a seemingly pretty typical poster which shows off the ensemble cast
09:26against an unremarkable dark backdrop.
09:28But take a look at Pete Davidson,
09:30who is the only member of the cast handling a weapon of any kind,
09:34a machete-like weapon no less.
09:36This hilariously spoils the fact that Davidson's character David
09:39is technically the killer who kills the movie's first victim.
09:43It just so happens that the first victim is himself.
09:46Indeed, David is the first person to die in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies,
09:49having his throat slashed by, you guessed it,
09:51the bladed weapon glimpsed up against his head in the poster.
09:54But the movie's big twist is that David wasn't murdered.
09:58He accidentally killed himself while trying to open a bottle of champagne
10:01with the weapon for a TikTok video.
10:03It's basically all blatantly hinted at visually by what we see on the poster,
10:07even if you might not quite realise just how spoilerific it is
10:11until you've watched the film yourself.
10:12Number 1. Sonia falls to her death, Plum Bum or the Dangerous Game
10:17An extremely deep cut now with the 1987 Soviet drama Plum Bum or the Dangerous Game.
10:23Both of the primary posters for the cult classic film show the face of lead actor Anton Andrasov,
10:29who plays the title character, interspersed with an image of what appears to be
10:33a young woman falling to her death.
10:35And so, can you guess precisely what fate befalls the movie's primary female character, Sonia?
10:40That's right, she leaps off a roof to her brutal demise in the film's very last scene.
10:44While one of the posters at least disguised as the falling individual's identity,
10:49another quite blatantly shows not only that she's a woman wearing a white gown,
10:53but makes no effort whatsoever to disguise the face.
10:56Given that Sonia's death is the grim climax to the entire movie,
11:00it's an extremely bizarre choice indeed.
11:02And that concludes our list.
11:03If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments below,
11:07and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:10Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
11:13and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
11:17I've been Ellie with WhatCulture,
11:18I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
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