Who needs the cinema? Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at trailers that gave away almost the entire story arc or key twists. While these trailers didn’t find it necessary to give a spoiler warning, we thought we should.
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00:00Is she with you?
00:02I thought she was with you.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at trailers that gave away almost the entire story arc or key twists.
00:09While these trailers didn't find it necessary to give a spoiler warning, we thought we should.
00:13What did you do today?
00:15All same, all same, all.
00:18Number 10, Goldeneye.
00:20James Bond is back. He's got a new face, specifically Pierce Brosnan's.
00:24It's too easy.
00:26Half of everything is luck, James.
00:28He's got a new mission that still involves saving the world, and he's got a new enemy.
00:32Sean Bean's Alex Trevelyan, who starts as Bond's friend and fellow agent 006.
00:37And this time, 007 is facing the ultimate enemy.
00:41The man who knows him best.
00:44Hello, James.
00:45What an unpleasant surprise.
00:47006.
00:48We think Trevelyan dies during the opening sequence.
00:50The movie does a good job presenting other potential big bads building up to the reveal, just shy of the final act.
00:56Of course, all that careful misdirection is irrelevant to anyone who watched the theatrical trailer first.
01:01Back from the dead.
01:04No longer just an anonymous start on the memorial wall at MI6.
01:07It sets up the film as a battle between Bond and his former friend almost right away.
01:11It even shows the sinister Bean emerging from the shadows, leaving the audience seven steps ahead of Bond.
01:17Number 9, Arlington Road.
01:19Talk about taking the thrill out of the thriller.
01:21This trailer did an excellent job setting up the central mystery of Mark Pellington's 1999 psychological thriller.
01:27Where's my son?
01:29Are Michael Faraday's new neighbors really terrorists?
01:32Or is Jeff Bridges' college professor character imagining this due to lingering trauma caused by his FBI agent wife's death?
01:38Except on that Monday, they didn't come home.
01:40In a truck parked in front was hidden 50 pounds of C4 plastic explosive.
01:47It's quite intriguing, right up until they give you the answer, removing any ambiguity.
01:51He was right, they're terrorists.
01:53My transcript sent over.
01:54You've got to admit, there is something not right here.
01:57The trailer follows up the big reveal with scenes from the action-heavy final part of the film.
02:01Which they probably also should have left as a surprise.
02:05Number 8, The Double.
02:07I can't believe Paul Shepardson is really Cassius.
02:10Is what people leaving this movie would have been saying, had they not already learned that in its trailer.
02:14Who are you?
02:18Cassius.
02:20You'd think a retired CIA agent actually being the very assassin he is hunting.
02:25Is a plot point studios would want to keep out of the film's promotional material.
02:28But, no.
02:30While most of the entries on this list fared well at the box office, despite a revelatory trailer.
02:34That's not the case with 2011's The Double.
02:36It's not Cassius' time.
02:38You never caught him.
02:40We're not saying the trailer is the cause.
02:42But when a movie with Richard Gere, Topher Grace and Martin Sheen costs $13 million.
02:47And only brings in $4.7 million, it's fair to wonder.
02:50Cassius is dead.
02:52For once Paul, I think you're wrong.
02:54Number 7, Terminator Genisys.
02:56Giving away key plot points in trailers has been a hallmark of the Terminator franchise since 1991.
03:01The Terminator 2 trailer revealed that Arnold's evil Terminator was now John Connor's savior.
03:06Come with me if you want to live.
03:08Then, the trailer for 2009's Salvation let it slip that Sam Worthington's character was secretly a Terminator.
03:13But the trailer for 2015's Terminator Genisys takes the proverbial cake.
03:17It shows that John Connor himself, the leader of the human resistance, is now a human-slash-Terminator hybrid working for Skynet.
03:24John.
03:25Hi, Mommy.
03:26How can you be here?
03:28Such a major reveal wasn't necessary to sell the movie.
03:30We already get a new T-1000, Daenerys as Sarah Connor and a hint that this movie will subvert the earlier Terminator films.
03:37Why show us what specific form the subversion will take?
03:40I'm not machine.
03:42I'm not man.
03:44I'm Lord.
03:46Number 6, The Cabin in the Woods.
03:48A group of college students go on a road trip to a remote cabin in the woods.
03:52Everybody ready?
03:56They are attacked by zombies and other creatures.
03:58It feels like they're in a horror movie.
04:00Really, they're in a filmed and produced experiment based on horror tropes.
04:04Like the Truman Show, but with murder.
04:06Calm down.
04:08Watch the master work.
04:09This sounds like an excellent premise for a movie.
04:11It also sounds like the kind of movie that would do best to keep the main reveal of the people pulling the strings out of its trailer.
04:16The Cabin in the Woods doesn't do that.
04:18They had enough horror material to work with, but instead of using that to keep the misdirect alive, they pulled back the curtain a little too soon.
04:24Places, everyone.
04:26We are live.
04:28Number 5, Castaway.
04:30If you search for the Castaway trailer online, you're likely to find a version that establishes Tom Hanks' work-focused character Chuck Noland,
04:36follows him onto the ill-fated airplane, and ends with him stranded on a desert island.
04:40It sets up the premise without giving too much away.
04:42Anybody?
04:45If you search a little bit deeper, you'll stumble on what audiences saw in theaters back in 2000.
04:49There are key scenes of Hanks on the island, learning how to survive and attempting to escape.
04:54I have been fired.
04:58Most notably, we get a look at him after he is rescued four years later, reintegrating into society and rebuilding his now former life.
05:05Or, in other words, it's the whole movie mapped out from start to finish.
05:08I would rather take my chance out there on the ocean than to stay here and die.
05:13Number 4, What Lies Beneath.
05:15This 2000 Robert Zemeckis film is a slow-burn supernatural mystery with ample twists and turns.
05:21We discover there is a spirit haunting the Spencers' quiet lake house.
05:24It's not who Michelle Pfeiffer's Claire Spencer originally thinks, however.
05:27I heard noises.
05:29What kind of noises? Where?
05:31At the house.
05:32The spirit instead has a connection to Harrison Ford's Norman Spencer.
05:35Then, the spirit possesses Claire and Norman realizes just who she is.
05:39You can follow the mystery and discover the secrets at the appropriate dramatic pace.
05:43There's a ghost in my house.
05:49I saw her in the water, beside me, in the bathtub.
05:53If you don't have time for that, you can just watch the trailer, which gives everything away, almost beat for beat.
05:57At least it doesn't show the resolution.
05:59But that's all this trailer leaves for the film to reveal.
06:02Number 3, Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice.
06:05A good superhero movie trailer lets people know which key characters are involved,
06:09what actors are playing them, and what the general premise is.
06:12Who's that?
06:14You must be new.
06:16That is Bruce Wayne.
06:18It also shows some, but not too much, of the action.
06:21With 2016's Batman v Superman, we already get the superheroes and premise from the title.
06:26So showing Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill makes sense.
06:29Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent.
06:31I love it!
06:32Since this is clearly a Justice League precursor, showing Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is logical too.
06:37But this movie's second trailer gave us much more than a glimpse at her,
06:40going beat for beat through the film's main plot points.
06:43The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world.
06:48Son of Krypton versus Bat of Gotham.
06:51Given all that, it's the reveal of Doomsday as a principal antagonist that earned this trailer number 3 on our list.
06:57Number 2, Groundhog Day.
06:59This movie has a simple premise.
07:00Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a permanently unimpressed weatherman who is somehow reliving the same day.
07:06I'm reliving the same day over and over.
07:09If the trailer stuck to that and offered a few other fun scenes, then it would have done its job.
07:13Instead, we get to see the steps Murray's character takes to escape, embrace, and eventually benefit from his predicament.
07:19In order.
07:20I am an immortal.
07:21I have been stabbed, shot, burned, frozen, electrocuted.
07:26I'm a god.
07:28The trailer doesn't give away some of the more dramatic moments, but it does show almost all of the comedy and romance,
07:33which is an interesting choice given that this is a romantic comedy.
07:36Groundhog Day frequently ranks among the greatest comedies of all time.
07:39Do you ever have deja vu, Mrs. Lancaster?
07:42I don't think so, but I could check with the kitchen.
07:44Maybe that's because the jokes are good enough to laugh at a second time.
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08:03Number one, Rocky IV.
08:05This is a battle between America and Russia near the end of the Cold War.
08:09Sylvester Stallone's Rocky versus Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago.
08:12Drago is the most perfectly trained athlete ever.
08:16Rocky's former adversary turned good friend, Apollo Creed, played by the late Carl Weathers,
08:20will be part of the all-stars and Stripes' hoopla too.
08:23If the trailer had left it at that, it would have been a perfect plug for the movie,
08:26which in 1985 could have packed theaters on the franchise name alone.
08:30I must break you.
08:32Unfortunately, they decided to reveal the fact that Creed dies.
08:35While this happens early in the film, it recontextualizes everything that follows.
08:39Has the fight date been set yet?
08:41December 25th.
08:42It's the emotional gut punch, or more specifically head punch to the audience,
08:46that is sadly muted if they watch the trailer first.
08:49Did these trailers really give too much away?
08:51What trailer spoiled the movie for you?
08:53Let us know in the comments.
08:54That's the whole point. Get off the grid, right?
08:58Did you enjoy this video?
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