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Easily the most important aspect of pre-release movie marketing is releasing a trailer to sell the movie to audiences: it needs to let potential customers know who’s starring in it, what the story is, and crucially, convey the tone of the piece. However, sometimes studios know that they’re working with something a little more challenging (or terrible) to sell to a mainstream audience, and so will flat-out lie in the trailer to give audiences a different impression about what the movie is.

Everyone’s gone to see a movie only to leave two hours later bemused that it was nothing like the trailer, and though it can sometimes be pleasantly surprising, it’s often irritating because it reeks of false advertising, that studios have lied in order to sell more tickets. There’s certainly a question to be asked about the legality of such practices (and numerous lawsuits have sprung up over the years about the honesty of movie trailers), for though a vague trailer is sometimes necessary to disguise a clever plot twist, it’s not quite so noble when it’s blatantly shifting the goalposts to appeal to a more mainstream audience who would otherwise not be so interested in the film.

These 15 trailers rearranged plots, misrepresented the action content and simply didn’t prepare audiences for the movie they were about to watch.

What Was Advertised: Another kick-a** entry into the Iron Man series, with Ben Kingsley playing the classic comic book villain The Mandarin, who will prove to be Tony Stark’s most fierce threat to date.

The Truth: Though there was plenty to like in Shane Black’s movie, Kingsley’s character is the total opposite of what audiences were expecting: after an intense build-up, we find out half-way through Iron Man 3 that he’s actually an actor employed by the real Mandarin (later revealed to be Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian) to act as a mouthpiece. As such, rather than being the terrifying villain we were expecting, Kingsley’s part is pretty much relegated to comic relief, while Pearce’s take on the villain is simply too left-field to be satisfying for comic book fans.

Some defend the creative decision to so grossly subvert expectations, though others attest that Marvel a) took a giant dump on a classic character and b) simply didn’t deliver what the trailer advertised. After looking forward to Kingsley’s Mandarin becoming Iron Man’s most challenging foe, to see that completely ditched for the sake of a running joke was hugely disappointing to many.

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This article was first posted on September 22, 2014

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus\' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.