When great trailers happen to bad movies

We’ve all been suckered into seeing a bad movie by a good trailer at some point in our life. Whether a film is award-worthy or awful, savvy movie editors and marketers will do their best to sell audiences on a movie in the two-and-a-half minutes they are given. If that means crafting a slightly misleading trailer that makes a “Wild Hogs” look like "Casablanca" then so be it. Movies are big business and marketing is a huge part of it.

Of course, it's hard not to feel disappointed when the actual film doesn't live up to the hype its trailer generated. Here are five movies that had amazing trailers but ended up being not so great.

"Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" (1999)

The first trailer for “The Phantom Menace” offered tantalizing glimpses of a place audiences hadn’t been in almost two decades: a galaxy far, far away. The two-minute teaser introduced younger versions of familiar characters, newcomers like Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), and new villain Darth Maul (and his double-bladed lightsaber!)­– all while invoking iconic music cues from John Williams’ original trilogy scores. It was “Star Wars”… sort of!

The countless shots of the insufferable CGI character Jar Jar Binks in the trailer should have been our first clue that “Episode I” was doomed from the start.

“The Matrix Reloaded” (2003)

After the 1999 sci-fi sleeper hit “The Matrix” became the obsession of almost every movie fan, the first trailer for the Wachowski’s “The Matrix Reloaded” scratched all the right itches. It promised a more expansive story, more characters, more action, and more Keanu Reeves being a weird cyberpunk superman!

However, we now know that “Reloaded” would have benefitted from being a lot more like its trailer: more kung-fu and fewer heady philosophical debates. Not that “Matrix” fans don’t enjoy seeing Reeves struggle with the nature of reality, but they’d probably prefer to see him punch an Agent Smith or two into orbit while techno music played.

“Saw” (2004)

Say what you will about the franchise as a whole, but the first trailer for the 2004 indie horror film “Saw” had a huge amount of potential. Two men locked in a room. One is told he must escape; the other is told he must kill the man opposite him or his family will be killed. Those are some serious stakes!

Spawning countless inferior sequels, the first “Saw” movie wasn’t so much bad as it was disappointing. The gruesome premise promised by the trailer eventually fell victim to so many horror movie clichés, becoming more about the killer and the over-the-hill detective (played by Danny Glover) hunting him than about the two men in the box.

"Superman Returns" (2006)

Featuring one of the most iconic film scores ever created and a posthumous voiceover from none other than Marlon Brando (who reprised the role of Jor-El despite dying in 2004), you couldn’t help but be filled with hope after watching the teaser trailer for Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns.” A “Superman” flick from the guy who made the first two “X-Men” movies? Sign us up!

Unfortunately, “Returns” felt too beholden to the earlier “Superman” films, and amounted to little more than two-and-a-half hours of the Man of Steel (Brandon Routh) moping about in space and Kevin Spacey hamming it up as villain Lex Luthor.

"Terminator: Salvation" (2009)

Fresh off of the massive critical and financial success of “The Dark Knight,” actor Christian Bale was set to take on the role of John Connor in another famous franchise: “Terminator.” Even though it was the first movie in the franchise without Arnold Schwarzenegger (though he did lend the production his likeness), people were willing to give “Terminator: Salvation” a chance because of Bale and the film’s absolutely gripping trailer (embedded above).

Taking a cue from the trailer for Zack Snyder’s “300”, the “Terminator: Salvation” trailer employed a Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails track to great effect, somehow giving an already dark, post-apocalyptic world an even harder and bleaker edge. If only the film, which offered nothing more than a hackneyed plot and seriously terrible performances from some very talented actors, had been half as good as its trailer. To this day, we wish we could see the movie that the “Terminator: Salvation” trailer was selling.

As long as there are bad movies being made, there will be Hollywood studios trying to salvage what they can with expertly assembled trailers. Even if a movie is terrible, a good trailer can make the difference between success and failure. It’s all in the marketing.

What’s your favourite trailer for a movie that ended up being a disappointment? Let us know in the comments.