Why Are Trailers Lying?

The following will contain, what you might consider spoilers for Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Blade Runner 2049, Thor: Ragnarok and I guess Suicide Squad.  So beware!

I'm sure this isn't a completely new concept, but, it does seem like there is a strong resurgence of movie trailers trying to sell me on something the movie never plans on delivering.  I'm not talking about instances like in Justice League, where scenes are just taken out.  I mean like how most of the Suicide Squad marketing tried to make audiences think that Joker was a main villain or even a lead character.

As I said on Spoiled Rotten Podcast, the marketing team did this movie a great disservice by getting people's hopes up for a Joker movie.  I get that there is no world where a movie would, or possibly, even could, hide the fact that Joker would appear, but they really leaned into Joker.

This issue came up again in the Kingsman: The Golden Circle.  I enjoyed it, but I was distracted by the fact that Channing Tatum is only in the movie for like 2 minutes and some of the scenes I thought I'd see don't even show up in the film.

Why not just hide the fact that Channing Tatum is in the movie?  That would be a nice surprise wouldn't it?  Instead I'm sitting there wondering when Channing will actually get to work with the Eggsy.  Spoiler Alert!  He never does!  He is sidelined almost immediately then returns at the end to set up a sequel.  That's fine... but don't make me think he's a lead by putting him in the trailers and even the credits of the trailers.

Now, to be fair, Blade Runner 2049 doesn't do exactly what the Kingsman sequel does.  All of Harrison Ford's scenes are in the movie, but he is not in it as much as the trailers would have you believe.  He is important to the overall story but this isn't an instance of Ryan and Harrison going on an adventure together.  Harrison's Deckard is a late addition to the movie and, once again, could have been saved for a surprise in the actual movie.  People would have been speculating on whether or not Deckard would show up.  Creating crowd sourced publicity for the movie.

Instead the movie under performed.  I heard that a lot of people thought it was boring, even though I disagree.  People definitely thought the movie was too long.  Again, I can't relate.  Could it be that those people were waiting for the movie to start in earnest, which is to say, for Deckard to appear?

Thor: Ragnarok doesn't tease bigger roles for characters who don't actually have them.  But the shot @ 2:00 is pretty misleading.  I won't fully get into why because everyone should see this and have that moment be as jolting as it was for me.  I'm mostly calling into question why that specific shot was used, since there is another one that could have been used without being misleading.  Oh also, Hulk, Thor, Valkyrie, and Loki are never on the bridge like in the still and this never happens

But I understand that those are things that can be cut for time.  The trailer's two minute mark mislead is weird since it doesn't need to happen and just adds to a year of trailers lying to me.

I don't really have any answers.  I just want to know why marketing teams are setting up expectations that could have a detrimental effect on how the movie is received.   Also, why are they purposely misleading me by touching up scenes for trailers to keep secrets when they could just as easily not hinge the trailers on those scenes?

If you have some answers, hit me up.

-YG