Promoting a movie by using imagery that isn’t actually in it.

There’s a whole history of the use of marketing as its own canvas for expanding the world within, and building hype for, a movie. Here are just a handful of examples:

100% agree that in both form and function, 'Civil War's AI-generated marketing is bad.

100% disagree that only images that are actually in a movie should be used to market it. It's great when a movie uses marketing as its own canvas for world expanding and hype building. 🧵 https://t.co/qUwuAuk4gX pic.twitter.com/DXcvNZBaxn

— viewinder (@viewinder) April 21, 2024

Visuals which could be in the movie, but aren’t

At no point in Jaws (1975) are both shark and victim in the same frame, as in the poster. In fact – famously, and crucially – we barely even see the shark:

The light-leaking egg in the trailer for Alien (1979) is completely different from the alien eggs in the actual movie. Nonetheless, the trailer remains one of the best of all time:

Legendary stop-motion animator Stan Winston crafted the teaser trailer for Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), which portrays a factory line construction of T-800s – a sequence which isn’t in the film:

Stock Footage

The first teaser trailer for Interstellar (2014) features mostly stock footage and a voice over which isn’t in the film:

‘Real World’

The trailer for The Minus Man (1999) contains no footage from The Minus Man. Instead, it follows two people who have just watched the movie, and talk about it all night – and you will not see the ending coming:

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Director Alfred Hitchcock walks us through the film’s sets, yet reveals no footage from the finished film in the trailer for his movie Psycho (1960). Instead, Hitchcock’s persona, and his gleeful taste for the gruesome, perversely prepares audiences for the movie:

Hitchcock continued the gimmick in the marketing for its follow-up, The Birds (1963):

Brad Pitt and Edward Norton‘s absurd PSA-style teaser trailers for Fight Club (1999) aren’t scenes from the movie – yet they convey the satirical spirit (and commentary on cinema-going) of the world of the film, perhaps better than literal clips from it would have:

In a similar vein, The Jerk (1979) “For Theater Owners Only” Trailer:

Deadpool (2016) breaks so far through the fourth wall in his own movie, that the marketing materials break into and through other media:

Further Viewing

More about trailers – the good, and the transformative:

Film School: What Makes A Good Trailer?

Film School: How Editing Can Transform Genre

In the marketing for writer-director Alex Garland‘s Civil War (2024), film studio A24 utilised AI-generated images – which many were quick to criticse:

Film School: AI in Film Marketing