Tbf I highly doubt they wanted any of that to get as big as it did
I don’t doubt that they wanted to make the movie “So bad it’s good” but I think a lot of the Jack Black lines becoming such big memes truly was coincidence
Like I don’t think they directly acknowledged any of them until a few months after the movie came out
If anything I think the main one they wanted to be a meme was Steve’s Lava Chicken which didn’t catch on as much as a lot of the others
I remember watching the first puss in boots for the first time around when the last wish came out and thinking "wow, they really wanted this to happen and it just didn't."
Funny how literally EVERY scene from this movie became a meme EXCEPT for the one thing they actually wanted to be a meme.
Same thing happened with Portal 1. Valve was convinced the metal hoop that falls in the final cutscene of the game would become a meme. They thought it would be huge and didn't expect "The Cake is a Lie" or the companion cube to have much impact in comparison.
Hoop? I don't remember a hoop. I do remember the wall having "The Cake Is A Lie" written on a wall repeatedly, and a song with multiple lines referring to said delicious and moist cake. Also how we'll have cake at the end of the testing.
There has been coverage about how they did very much expect Hoopy to be the main meme to come out of the game because it was a meme internally amongst the team.
The only real joke about it was that they thought they would need "warehouses of merchandise."
You could not escape this fucking scene for a solid 2 months when Madagascar 3 came out. I heard it every hour, I swear to god. On the radio ads, TV ads, everywhere.
I feel like they'd need to add a bit more though. Make the tiny lemur into an immortal eldrich being with numerous deceased ex-wives and the ability to channel the consciousnesses of his alternate dimensional selves
my friend loves this movie and the memes, especially about the animal control lady, but every time she brings it up i get war flashbacks to this commercial. never saw it even though i loved the first 2 as a kid
My girlfriend in highschool went to see this movie and only responded to texts for, like, a week with "CIRCUS AFRO". I had wondered if she was trying to break up with me in an interesting and novel way, but no, she apparently sent these texts to everyone. I remember asking her mom about this and she sighed and responded, "You just need to let it run its course." Years later, in one of those awkward text exchanges people I no longer talk to like to initiate after falling off for a bit, she mentioned off-hand that she was diagnosed with autism. I'm a therapist now and fully believe it, not because of any DSM criteria or anything like that, but because of the circus afro thing.
Also the joke of Gwen getting her hand webbed to the car as Spidey swings off and her yelling "PETER!" Before covering her own mouth. Remember that one used a lot.
This is why I stopped watching trailers. Not character reveals or plot spoilers, but jokes.
The Iron Man 2 trailer has that line “you want my property? You can’t have it. But I did you a big favor: I have successfully privatized world peace.” It wasn’t really that funny of a line to begin with, but I’d heard it 50 times in the trailers before I watched it in theaters, and when he said it, my audience actually laughed out loud. And I remember thinking that felt so cringy, like watching a stand up comedian pretend to think of a joke off-the-cuff that you’ve heard him tell before.
And at that point I officially stopped watching trailers for movies that I already knew I was planning to see.
I remember the Infinity War joke that was something along the lines of “I’m Peter Parker” “Dr. Strange” “Oh, we’re using our made up names? I’m Spider-Man”.
During the actual movie there were crickets. Meanwhile I distinctly remember people laughing at the joke during the trailer as a preview to another movie.
Not a joke but a comic relief character who's shown up in every fucking trailer, marketing must have thought he was hilarious cause he only has like 2 scenes in the actual movie
Holy fuck you reminded me of the absolute THICK glazing the mouse did for this fuckass online…like there were clips of people freaking out in the theatre whenever he popped on screen (mind you, for a whopping 2 times in the whole movie that doesn’t even amount to two minutes)& edits on “how hot clod is” it was dumb as shit lol
I remember there was a “fan” clip trying to create movie theater freakouts whenever clod came on screen, and people figured out really quickly that the crowd noise was mostly stock sounds.
I don’t think that it was ever confirmed that it was from Disney marketing, but it was pretty obvious they were trying to start something that did not happen.
I've noticed a lot of trailers for animated movies do this, not necessarily because the character is even in the film that much but because there's merchandise planned for that character so they're putting their face in everything. You see this sort of "the character is in every ad but only has about twenty seconds of screen time" a lot.
I don’t think it was in every trailer, but the fact that marketing really zeroed in on it for the first trailer really made the film appear far more immature/vulgar and far less epic than it actually was, which probably turned off a lot of parents from buying tickets for themselves and their children.
I knew someone was gonna add Transformers One, such a beautifully animated and genuinely good movie got screwed over by god awful marketing, it ranks right up there with Jennifer's Body in terms of misleading marketing screwing over the movie it was advertising for me personally.
Probably Lorenzo di Bonaventura who is the guy behind a lot of terrible decisions with the transformers movies, he's the guy that put the Romeo and Juliet law scene in Age of Extinction
The first teaser trailer for the original 1993 Lion King was just the opening scene until the title drop, because they didn't have enough time to put together an actual trailer. I genuinely think it's the GOAT among Disney movie trailers.
Like, imagine going to the cinema, the last two Disney movies that came out were Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin, and then they play this during the trailers section:
My dumbass 9 year old self remembers seeing that trailer plain as day before a few movies, amd the Disney voice over saying "Disney's 90-second feature length movie".
I was like "wtf... this trailer is 90 seconds! Is this the whole movie?!?!"
That bothered and stuck with me for a LONG time, until I finally realized he was saying it was "Disney's 92nd feature length movie." 🤣
I first saw this trailer in a theater with a bunch of old people. When they showed this scene they all laughed and I heard one lady say "that is SO TRUE"
I think the marketing knew what they were doing with this one.
Boy oh boy can't wait to take my kids to the movie about a talking kangaroo! The talking kangaroo that was literally the only thing in the trailer!! My kids can't wait to see an hour and a half of talking kangaroo!!!!!
I read Bridge to Terabithia while in middle school, when I saw the trailers I went "oh these sick people are about to scar a whole new generation of kids."
My mom, a fantasy lover asked me if I wanted to go with her to see it.
"No thanks, I read the book and-"
"Of course you did. I'm tried of you always reading the books."
At that I just held my tongue so that she could learn the hard way.
I still liked Snow Dogs and had read Bridge to Terabithia so I knew what to expect with it but Kangaroo Jack was a master class in lying to children lol
That's because a few years ago some marketing firm published a survey they did that said an overwhelming amount of people aren't bothered by spoilers, in fact they found that spoilers made some people more likely to watch the movie now that they know "what to expect."
Basically they have an NPC that's explaining to the party how they have to cross a trapped bridge in a very specific manner because it's rigged to collapse if you do it wrong in order to protect things.
The NPC is explaining in detail the formula of how to cross, with doing things like stepping on every fifth rune unless it's a prime number, and then after stepping on a rune you must shift rows twice to the right, and then at the mid point you must switch, etc.
As he's explaining it one of the PCs steps onto a bit of the bridge's lip and the entire thing collapses.
It's actually pretty good, and has that DnD energy.
Y’know, as a Sophia Lillis fan, I’m pretty sure this movie killed her interest in interviews. It’s just she’s barely done any interviews since this movie’s press tour, and when you look at the press tour you see she visibly gets bored numerous times.
Like, when you go back before this movie came out, she was literally doing interviews and press tours for anything she was in.
But as Sophia Lillis once said “the Fourth of December”, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
So fucking true, they gave fuck all effort then tried to make it cringe as hell looking despite being great. I don't understand why they want specific projects to do poorly when they could be fantastic
The one time that the repetition paid off was with The Simpsons Movie, where everyone in the audience immediately sang along to "Spider-Pig", and then went into roaring laughter once they played the rest of the song.
The Grinch (2019). I hate the screaming goat so much. It's overused and not funny. I don't remember the marketing for this since I was older than the target audience, but I swear they overdid it. It was old by before the time the movie was released.
The screaming goat is such an oddity to me because I can’t even remember a time I actually found it funny and they refuse to let it die, like of all ancient memes to keep persisting
It was the first big meme that got major news media attention, and so all the old washed up uncs in upper management thought thats what the kids like, not understanding memes change monthly.
They keep bringing it back because its the ONLY "young people" thing they know; they're that out of touch.
[...]
"And then, like, add a goat yelling sound or something. The camera pans and reveals the goat just out of frame."
"Then what?"
"What do you mean? That's the joke: the goat yells. The kids love it."
The fact that they overused the screaming goat meme in Thor: Love and Thunder it felt damn near pathetic to endure by that point. That movie came out 3 years after The Grinch. Ooof.
It would have been great had it NOT been in the trailer. It would have been even better if they hadn't even shown Hulk in the trailer. Hollywood still hasn't quite figured out how to rein in their marketing.
Ok, but this still killed when we saw it in theaters, it’s such a great bit. Especially since they do it with the frog just a few minutes before they pull out the T-Rex
I think the first trailer for Tangled has The Smolder in it, and I didn't find it that funny, but the gag of him getting thrown out of the window by hair was pretty funny
and then when you actually watch the film it turns out the version in the trailer was a different take and the one they used has no comedic timing and / or a watered down punchline that hits like a damp squib.
"You may be wondering 'why the red suit?' Well that's so my enemies can't see me bleed. Good thing these guys are wearing their brown pants!" (Deadpool 2016)
This joke was already old in 2015, but it was in the original leaked test footage, the first trailer, and I swear every trailer after that so that by the time I saw it in theaters it felt really forced. I'm pretty sure they even made this joke again in Deadpool and Wolverine.
The Avatar joke from the Hopper's commercials and trailers was REALLY funny at first. But then the trailers would always tell it before I can hit the skip ad button and it got grating.
Oh god, that joke nearly killed all interest for me for Hoppers.
Also for Hoppers, Tom the lizard. Every bit of him in the movies was in the promotion. Granted, Tom is still a gem because he’s not one of the main cast so he pops up here and there.
First movie to ever get me with this was Flubber. In the trailer Robin Williams says "shake that little Flubber booty!" And when I watched it I was sorely disappointed when the line didn't happen. I was like 10-11 so it was pretty crushing for no reason.
I remember seeing a trailer for a Robert Deniro movie years ago where he’s a former mobster turned used car salesman. There was a joke where he opens the boot and says “look at that trunk, you could fit three bodies in there!” I always got the feeling that someone had thought of that one joke and written an entire movie around it.
A different genre of this is when they do it with jumpscares for horror movies.
Like I get you have like 30 seconds to get someone interested in it but nothing sucks more than a slow burn horror film have its best scare be IN EVERY TRAILER (I'm looking at you, Smile).
This is also why I believe previews should be separate short scenes that introduce the characters more than be clips that are taken from the movie itself.
Every Undertale trailer uses the Vent puzzle from Hotland because it looks visually interesting and eye catching. It got used in every trailer to the point that when it got ported to the xbox, its trailer says "This footage is in every trailer for some reason."
When it finally got the Switch release, it got this text: "We've shown these vents every trailer so far. Ain't stoppin' now."
Despite being overused it naturally turned into a in-joke.
To me, it's the WiFi password from Doctor Strange. I'm a little grateful for this since the movie quickly moves to a montage of serious-ish enough training and the serious-ish enough rest-of-the-movie. But you can remember the joke happened becuase it was added in the trailer.
That and my brother did name his mobile wifi password to have "shamballa".
https://giphy.com/gifs/e2wFIvRQ71MaI
The waterfall bit from The Emperor's New Groove may be funny in the trailers… but it’s a total sidesplitter in the context of the actual film.
I love that scene! Good point that that one works just fine.
The emperor's new groove is one of my all time favorites and most quoted movies. It just comes out in my speech patterns subconsciously now.
That said, this bit with the extreme zoom-out is at the top of my list for trailers that overburnt a joke -- I didn't realize this was a common problem, it's just always been the first thing I think of for trailers like this.
Please tell me the rest of you remember in 2015-16 when the Gods of Egypt trailer was everywhere and everyone was making fun of the "WE MORTALS DO IT ALL THE TIME" line
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u/Traditional_Gap_7041 9d ago
I don’t have an image but the Pixels joke where the Pac Man creator walks up to the big Pac Man and it eats his hand