Why Are There Scenes in the Trailer That Aren’t In the Movie? Again!
Posted on July 16, 2015 at 1:48 pm
Both of the big nationwide releases this week have widely distributed trailers that include scenes that are not actually in the movie. I’ve written about this before. Sometimes the movie is still being edited as the trailer is being prepared. Sometimes the trailer is edited to make edgier or more adult material tame enough to secure a “green band” for wider release. “Red band” trailers are supposed to be shown only to audiences 17 and over, though online it is all but impossible to make that distinction.
But both “Ant-Man” and “Trainwreck” are missing scenes that are in the trailers and there does not seem to be any particular reason. The “Ant-Man” trailer has Paul Rudd charmingly say that the name wasn’t his idea. Not in the film. The “Trainwreck” trailer seems to have as many lines that are not in the movie as those that are in.
Trailers used to be called “coming attractions.” We know they’re going to give us the highlights and make the movie seem as appealing as possible. But they should accurately represent what we are going to see.
I think it’s a filmmaker’s want to make sure that jokes are just as effective in the film itself without giving up too much in trailers. Or in the case of Seth MacFarlane’s films, he gives us clean versions of jokes littered with profanity or profane sight gags. Sure, one could easily do what Judd Apatow does with his films (whether directed, written, or produced) and give us “Line-o-Rama” special features on the home video versions, or include these scenes in the deleted scenes section of the Blu-Ray/DVD. We always hate it when trailers include too many of a film’s good scenes, don’t we?
Personally, I think it’s more important that a trailer matches the tone of the film itself, unless it’s an obvious spoof film which folks tend to market in every which way possible use this bait-and-switch to humorous ends (like the NAKED GUN trailers).
Lots of examples are here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MissingTrailerScene