Movie Trailer Fails: 10 Trailers That Ruined the Surprise

Movie promoters walk a tightrope. They have to balance the need to put butts in theater seats against revealing plot points that producers and directors wanted to be a surprise. Movie surprises are the subject of Twitter talk and spread Internet excitement for a film. With the advent of YouTube, trailers—and their spoilers—get far more exposure. Here are some movie trailers that gave away way too much.

Warning: spoilers abound in this list. If you come across a movie you haven’t seen and want to, skip that entry.

10 Speed (1994)

This 90’s thriller was so fun, many viewers could overlook its plot holes. Nor did Speed have any plot twists. But, the trailer revealed every important sequence, including the high-rise elevator rigged to drop its human payload. It also showed Officer Jack Traven attaching a cable to stop its fall.

Then there’s the centerpiece: the bus rigged to explode at speeds lower than 50 mph. The trailer revealed this and showed the bus successfully completing its unlikely jump across a gap in a highway overpass. Also, if you worried about the bus passengers, the trailer even shows the bus blowing up as the passengers look on safely from an airport tram. Key parts of the finale’ on the subway are revealed, including its blast through a wall. While that scene is eye-catching, it’s deflating to see it before we’ve gotten our popcorn.

9 The Island (2005)

Sometimes a trailer reveals a film’s weaknesses. There are reasons why Michael Bay’s 2005 venture – expected to be a summer blockbuster – was a huge flop. Perhaps McGregor and Johansson were relative unknowns to the under-25 target audience? Maybe The Island failed because it was an original screenplay that wasn’t a remake, sequel, or adaptation.

Others speculate that The Island was too much action and not enough substance. World wide, Armageddon (1998) made $550 million, The Rock (1996) $700 million, and Bad Boys (1995) $300 million. The Island made $163 million.

Near its release date, the National Research Group polled the target audience and found few were even aware of the movie. Dreamworks spent $35 million in ads. And those trailers? Explosions, car chases, cool Sci-fi gadgets, McGregor and Johansson rolling around in bed, and a plot point on the ethics of cloning. The trailer reveals what some think was the movie’s weakness. As movie critic Roger Ebert put it, The Island is a double-feature pretending to be one.

The Island’s first half takes place in a calm colony where computers measure the sodium in your urine and force you to eat healthy. The audience is fed that dystopian trope about cloning for the sake of using the clone’s body, a clear rip-off of Matrix. The second half is all action. Ebert says: “both halves work. Whether they work together is a good question. The more you like one, the less you like the other.”

8 Cast Away (2000)

This trailer gives away every narrative point in chronological order. It shows Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is an emotionally distant husband, often physically distant from his wife. The trailer shows Hanks boarding a plane on Christmas, the plane crashing, Hanks washing up on an island, his survival efforts, his relationship with a Wilson volleyball, and his cave shelter.

Cast Away is a survival drama. It would seem that the protagonist’s survival is what a trailer shouldn’t reveal. The ad reveals that Hanks survives and how he gets off the island. Worse, it spoils the emotional impact when Hanks returns to find his wife has remarried. It even shows the final image of him at a remote crossroads.

Director Robert Zemeckis supported making the trailer a mini synopsis of the movie. “We know from studying the marketing of movies, people really want to know exactly every thing that they are going to see before they go see the movie,” he said. He admits that as “a movie lover and film student and a film scholar and a director” he doesn’t like the plot spoiled. But he feels he’s the minority.

7 Rope (1948)

You would think that Alfred Hitchcock would have his bloody knickers in a bunch when the movie’s trailer diminishes his movie’s suspense. But in the case of Rope, Hitchcock wrote and filmed the trailer himself. He said: “I’m a little tired of seeing excerpts from next week’s picture flashed on the screen, and being told in the biggest words available not to miss the sensational coming attraction.”

Hitch’s trailer opens with a park scene where two lovers banter playfully. This scene doesn’t appear in the film and is meant as a contrast to movie’s disturbing overtones. As the man leaves the woman, Jimmy Stewart’s voice over declares she will never see him again. Then we get a short exposition by Stewart about the cast of characters, the murder, and the two killers said to be inspired by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

Rope isn’t a whodunit – we are told who the killers are up front – but it is a will-they-be –caught drama. It’s therefore surprising that Hitch spoiled this in his trailer. There in the trailer is Rupert Cadell opening the trunk which results in a climactic struggle for a pistol between Stewart and one of the killers, Brandon Shaw, that ends with the pistol firing.

6 The Terminator Franchise (1984 to present)

The franchise rights to Terminator have been sold numerous times. The new owners wanted to recoup their money with a new movie. But, the new writers and directors were more interested in creating something new that would sell, rather than building on James Cameron’s timeline. The results are six movies, a two-season TV series, three theme park attractions, and two webcasts.

The Terminator movies have a long history of having their surprise plot points spoiled by the trailers, starting with Terminator 2: Judgment Day. James Cameron hid the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger switched from the villain in the first movie to a hero in the second. Yet, there it is in the trailer.

For Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the twist was the ending which, unlike the previous movies, did not result in the thwarting of judgment day. In the film, Skynet did take over the world’s nuclear weapons and launched them. One of the trailers clearly shows the nuclear weapon exchange in the climax.

Director McG tried to hide the fact that Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) was himself a Terminator in Terminator: Salvation. The trailer revealed it.

The marketing department couldn’t wait to reveal that Schwarzenegger was going to fight his CGI younger self in their Terminator: Genisys trailer. But their other spoiler was far worse: the hero John Connor would not only be a villain, but a Terminator. The director, Alan Taylor, wasn’t pleased.

Marketing made no secret that Terminator: Dark Fate was the sequel to T2, hoping to draw crowds. Instead the trailers revealed the stark differences between it and T2. What’s more, the trailer’s omission of John Connor spoiled another plot twist. The trailer told audiences there’s nothing new to see here except the loss of a beloved character.

5 The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

The Cabin in the Woods is, as Joss Whedon put it, “a very loving hate letter” to the horror movie genre. Whedon and Director Drew Goddard felt the need to write the script after their disappointment with horror movies. “The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn,” Whedon added. The result was to turn horror tropes on their heads.

The movie is sprinkled with nods to classic horror. The Cabin in the Woods relies heavily on surprises. Even its laughs fall flat if they’re revealed ahead of time. And yet, that’s exactly what the trailer does. The monsters, the lab geeks, the nods to other horror movies are all there in the trailer.

4 Groundhog Day (1993)

The danger in promoting comedies is that it’s tempting to load trailers with every good joke. In the case of Groundhog Day, promoters gave into temptation. In just 150 seconds, the trailer coughs up virtually every decent joke out of Phil Connors’ (Bill Murray’s) mouth. What’s more, the trailer focuses more on the sight gags which gives the viewer the impression this is a slapstick comedy which it’s definitely not.

Clearly the promoters had little faith in the audience, because the voice-over unnecessarily explains that Murray must relive February 2 over and over again and tells us this gives him the opportunity to “get it right.” The voice-over tells us Murray can live his day without repercussions, eating what he wants to, doing whatever he wants to, sleeping with whoever he wants to. It even spoils the results of the movie’s love interest by telling us that Murray will get out of this loop by getting it “right” with Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell).

3 Arlington Road (1999)

Most of the films on this list were at least relatively successful at the box office. Not so with the thriller Arlington Road. This is a shame because Arlington Road deserved a better trailer.

Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) lives on Arlington Road and is a college professor who teaches a course on homegrown, American terrorists. Then Oliver (Tim Robbins) and Cheryl (Joan Cusack) Lang move into a neighboring house and Bridges begins to suspect they might be a family of terrorists. The ambiguity is the driving force of the first half of the movie. But the trailer focuses way too much on the second half of the movie when the ambiguity no longer exists and Bridges races against time to save his family and stop a catastrophe.

2 Catfish (2010)

Every movie trailer we’ve discussed thus far has lured or tried to lure audiences by what they show. Sometimes trailers are edited to fool the audience into thinking the movie was one genre, when it’s actually another. Banking on the success of Paranormal Activity, the trailer starts with what appears to be found-footage of two New York brothers, one of whom has struck up an on-line relationship with Megan from Gladstone, Michigan.

Then the boys take a road trip to Gladstone. The soundtrack becomes darker, more sinister while the brothers drive up at night to Megan’s family home and one brother admits he’s “scared.” Then, as a brother walks up to a darkened garage and peers into an opaque window, a quote of a critic is displayed: “the final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won’t be able to shake for days.”

We’re left with the impression Megan is not who she claims to be and what follows is a suspense-filled horror movie. Wrong.

Catfish is actually a documentary about Nev who has an on-line relationship with a woman who did, indeed, catfish him with a fake name and pictures of a professional model. Her real name is Angela and she is an older woman forced to stay at home to care for her disabled stepsons and lives vicariously through on-line romances. That’s it. There are no blood baths, no stalkers or killers, no Hitchcockian twists.

1 Avengers: Endgame/Spider-man: Far From Home (2019)

Avengers: Endgame may have relied more on surprising the audience than any movie. It’s the conclusion to the cliff-hanger at the end of Avengers:Infinity War where the villain, Thanos, literally wipes half the universe’s inhabitants from existence.

The Russo brothers went to great lengths to keep Endgame’s surprises secret. The actors weren’t allowed to know any plot points beyond the scenes they shot. The Russo brothers even altered the movie’s trailers to hide secrets in the movie.

Despite this, the Endgame trailers did spoil a few things. But not all spoilers came from Endgame trailers.

When Sony decided to release Spider-man: Far From Home just months after Endgame, the Russo brothers knew that it would spoil the surprise that Spider-man would be rescued from oblivion. When Far From Home’s trailer was released three months before Endgame hit theaters, it revealed Spider-man and Nick Fury came back. The second trailer, released a week and half after Endgame’s premiere, further revealed that Spider-man was mourning the death of Ironman, spoiling Endgame’s ending for those who hadn’t seen it yet.

If these spoilers did not make the tension between Sony and Disney/Marvel worse, they at least were indicative of it. The culprit of the tension was money. In late August, the two parties split, throwing the cross-over into oblivion. But the fan base responded so loudly, that a month later Sony and Disney/Marvel signed an agreement to keep Spidey in the MCU. For now.

What do you think? Which trailer ruined the movie for you? Leave your comment below!