The Problem with Movie Marketing
As a sort of (but not really) follow-up to my post The Most Horribly Timed Entertainment Release Ever, I want to dive into a topic I have zero firsthand experience with: marketing.
This isn’t about the wildest or most controversial campaigns, though there are plenty of bafflingly short-sighted examples out there. Instead, I’m focusing on the everyday, standard marketing efforts we see all the time, and why some of them completely miss the mark.
Even the most sensible, logical campaigns can backfire if certain factors aren’t taken into account. Sometimes these failures only seem obvious in hindsight (and honestly, I probably wouldn’t have spotted them at the time either). But others? They were clearly doomed from the start.
First Impressions are Everything
Drive. Plane. Skyscraper. Spy. Grandma. Sisters. Brooklyn. Neighbors. Chef. 65.
These aren’t just random nouns, they’re actual movie titles. It’s not hard to see why these names fall flat, but let’s take a closer look at why.
No matter how strong a marketing campaign may be, word-of-mouth remains the most powerful form of publicity. For that reason, a movie title should meet a few key criteria:
Memorable yet distinctive: The title should be easy to remember but not so generic that people don’t know what you’re referring to.
Rolls of the tongue: If you want people to talk about your movie, the name needs to be easy to say in conversation.
Relevant: The title should be relevant to the movie itself, giving at least some context about what it is.
Explained like this, naming a movie might sound complicated, but let’s be honest, we’ve all come up with awesome titles for that dream film or book idea we keep saying we’re going to write.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a 2023 vampire film adapted from a single chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The problem is, unless you already knew that, the title probably didn’t grab your attention, because the word “Dracula” is nowhere to be found. On its own, the title is ominous and fits the tone of the movie. But it also alienates most potential viewers, since almost no one outside of dedicated fans knows what “the Demeter” is. I myself had no idea it was a Dracula story until learning about it elsewhere. Interestingly, in some international markets, the film was titled Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter, a far more marketable choice. Yet for some reason, the U.S. release didn’t capitalize on the name recognition of one of the most iconic characters in horror. Which is a shame, because the movie is actually quite good, featuring one of the most terrifying portrayals of Dracula in recent years. Unfortunately, its poorly chosen title left it dead in the water.
Setting aside the quality of the movie itself, one of the problems with Disney’s John Carter stems from a long-standing Hollywood superstition: any film with the word “Mars” in the title is destined to fail. When the film was released in 2012, history seemed to support that fear. Titles like Mission to Mars, Ghost of Mars, Mars Attacks, and especially Mars Needs Moms (a notorious financial disaster for Disney just a year earlier) had all flopped. Rather than attributing those failures to weak storytelling or poor execution, Disney fixated on the word “Mars” as the culprit. As a result, the original title, John Carter of Mars, was shortened to the bland and context-free John Carter. This decision backfired spectacularly. The new title gave audiences no sense of the story, its setting, or its connection to the beloved book series. Many people didn’t even realize it was a sci-fi adventure at all. Uninspiring and uninformative, the rebranded title did nothing to generate interest, and the film went on to become one of the biggest box office flops in Hollywood history.
Misunderstood the Assignment
One of the biggest cardinal sins in movie marketing is a bad trailer. And “bad” can take many forms: giving away too much of the story, spoiling key twists that were meant to be a surprise, misrepresenting the film’s tone or intention, or even marketing it as something it’s not.
In 2005, The Island hit theaters as a sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian society where citizens believe the outside world is contaminated. Their only hope is a paradise called “The Island,” a destination reserved for those who win a lottery. The twist being that two of its inhabitants begin to suspect something is wrong and attempt to escape. It’s an intriguing premise, yet instead of teasing the mystery, the trailer completely spoils it. It features Steve Buscemi’s character outright explaining the entire plot, and Ewan McGregor’s line declaring, “There is no island.” So, they named the movie The Island... but the island doesn’t even exist?! In the DVD commentary, director Michael Bay admitted the domestic marketing was mishandled and revealed he repeatedly urged the studio to follow the international campaign, which presented the film as far more mysterious and appealing.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle was completely undermined by its own trailer, which spoiled a major twist: a key character presumed dead in the first film was, in fact, alive. Director Matthew Vaughn later expressed his frustration:
"Well, I’m not in charge of marketing. The thinking about that was stupidity, to be blunt. I begged the studio not to reveal it. Because it’s the whole driving force of the first act and if you didn’t know that scene it would’ve made the whole audience gasp. So you have to ask the lovely marketing guys because I think their job is to open the movie and don’t really care about the experience of the movie."
If you’re unfamiliar with The Cabin in the Woods (other than knowing it’s a horror movie), that's a good thing. It’s a great movie and highly recommend you watch it, but don't Google it and don't watch the trailer, just go in blind. Anyone who’s seen it will agree: the best way to experience this movie is knowing absolutely nothing beforehand.
Frustrated with the state of the horror genre at the time, producer Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard set out to write a script that flipped classic horror tropes on their heads. The result was a film built on surprises and subverting expectations. Unfortunately, the trailers completely ignored that intent and spoiled many of the film’s biggest twists. In fact, during a screening at the South by Southwest Film Festival prior to its theatrical release, a reporter went so far as to advise audiences not to watch the trailers.
The Marvels had no shortage of issues, but one major misstep was its trailer hyping up something that was ultimately irrelevant to the final film. When marketing puts heavy emphasis on a detail that doesn’t matter, it sets up false expectations, and that’s exactly what happened here.
As a writer or storyteller, it’s tempting to include little details or quirky nuances in your story. They can be interesting, funny, or even charming, but they need to serve a purpose. The reality is that the audience often doesn’t care about these extras in the same way you do unless they contribute to the story in a meaningful way. Every detail should either deepen character development, enrich the world, or advance the plot. If it doesn’t do any of these and is simply just a thing to be dealt with, the question then becomes: what was the point?
In the case of The Marvels, the early trailers heavily emphasized the place-swapping effect whenever the trio used their powers, making it seem like a central plot point. In reality, the gimmick barely mattered in the final film. After the first act, it quickly felt like nothing more than an afterthought that overstayed its welcome because the writers didn't know how to integrate it into the story after tacking it on.
While this can largely be blamed on weak writing, the marketing also shares the blame for leaning so heavily into it. By the time the final trailer rolled out, negative buzz had grown, a sense of likely underperformance had set in, and the promotion had shifted heavily towards referencing Avengers: Endgame, signaling that the movie was now relying almost entirely on its connection to the MCU.
Throw in an unintimidating villain dropping the cliché one-liner, "You took everything from me," and you have a collection of trailers that failed to convince audiences to see the film in theaters, especially knowing it would soon land on Disney+. All things considered, given how the final movie turned out, it’s hard to pin The Marvels’ failure entirely on marketing. They were, after all, just working with what they had.
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is a fascinating trilogy of marketing missteps, most of which could have been avoided. That said, I say this with the benefit of hindsight; some of these choices likely seemed like good ideas at the time.
Over the years, two-part movies have become much more accepted. With successes like The Avengers, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, It, and Dune, audiences have shown they’re willing to watch two films if it’s necessary to tell the full story. With that in mind, why not advertise your next action epic as a multi-film story? The difference is that all the previously mentioned successful two-parters were adaptations. They’re all previously established brands with previously established stories that fans were already invested in.
Mission: Impossible may be an established brand, but it does not have an established story. No one knows what to expect, and there’s no source material to get people excited for what’s to come. Without that built-in anticipation, labeling a film “Part One” can backfire, it effectively tells audiences that it's an incomplete movie. In which case, many viewers will simply wait for the second installment so they can watch both films together and get the full experience.
But to give Paramount a little credit, they acknowledged this later on and dropped "Part One" from the home release, and "Part Two" from the follow-up. That said, while Mission: Impossible was able to avoid it, this approach could backfire even harder: if the first movie flops, it could result in the finale getting cancelled, as seen with Allegiant.
Moving past the title, Mission: Impossible is a franchise celebrated for its jaw-dropping stunts. Yet with Dead Reckoning, the filmmakers made the puzzling choice of revealing their biggest stunt months in advance, and even worse, showing extensive behind-the-scenes footage of how it was done. By the time the movie hit theaters and audiences saw Tom Cruise drive a motorcycle off a cliff, the shock factor had long since worn off.
The impact of the stunt was further weakened by the way it was edited. Audiences have grown accustomed to computer-generated spectacle, so even though this stunt was real, it felt artificial because it was presented in a generic style that made it look like any other CGI stunt. In my opinion, the filmmakers should have drawn inspiration from real-life BASE-jumping footage for the cinematography, capturing the stunt in a more grounded, authentic way to highlight the fact that they did it for real.
Finally, to actually harken back to my Horribly Timed Releases post, Dead Reckoning made a critical scheduling mistake: it opened just a week before the Barbenheimer phenomenon. This was a misstep that could, and should, have been avoided. Everyone and their mother knew Barbie and Oppenheimer were going to be massive. With Barbie dominating ticket sales as girls dragged their boyfriends to the theater, and Oppenheimer dominating IMAX screens, Dead Reckoning was faced with an impossible mission.
