Controversial Trailer Moments That Went Too Far

Throughout the 2000s, gay panic jokes were incredibly common in mainstream American comedy movies. While the 1990s had brought mainstream comedies with queer leads like "The Birdcage" and "In & Out," the following decade was dominated by movies where 20-something-year-old men asked each other "Do you know how I know you're gay?" This trend was never cool and always reeked of both intolerance and sheer laziness. Frustration with the normalization of these gags reached a tipping point with the release of the first trailer for the 2011 Vince Vaughn and Kevin James comedy "The Dilemma," which began with Vaughn's character announcing that "electric cars ... are gay."

After proceeding to emphasize that electric cars are gay in the "my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay" way rather than being explicitly homosexual, the trailer moves on, having used this moment to emphasize the "coolness" of Vaughn's character. In the wake of this trailer, an outcry emerged from queer commentators and LGBTQ+ organizations about the marketing for "The Dilemma" leaning so hard on such a cruel joke. Eventually, director Ron Howard took to the press to announce that the original trailer would be pulled, but that the original "electric cars ... are gay" line would be kept in the final film, explaining that removing the gag would "endanger comedy as both entertainment and a

provoker of thought." It was a very extreme response to criticism of a joke seemingly lifted from any number of 2000s bro comedies.

Kevin Smith has long been enamored with the internet and the way it can spread his artistic visions out into the world. Just look at his modern podcast empire, which has been made entirely possible due to the World Wide Web. His fascination with the digital realm was reinforced in 2008 when he dropped a teaser trailer for his then-upcoming movie "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" which was designed for online consumption only. The teaser didn't contain any footage from the final film but did offer a tease of what the tone of "Zack and Miri" would be like as well as the chemistry shared between lead actors Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks.

However, in June 2008, shortly after the teaser trailer was uploaded, Kevin Smith announced that the MPAA had forced the takedown of this piece of promotional material. Per a post on Smith's News Askew site (via First Showing), Smith said the MPAA claimed that the trailer couldn't be released because its board hadn't vetted it. Since previous internet-only trailers for Smith movies had never inspired MPAA ire, the director said, this decision was incredibly baffling. Apparently, though, the raunchy material contained in the teaser was considered just too transgressive for the folks at the MPAA, and the trailer was taken down. The internet has given Smith many gifts, but even it couldn't help the "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" teaser avoid the iron fist of this gigantic ratings organization.

Compared to other trailers that generated lots of conversation and discourse, the brouhaha that surrounded the full trailer for "Nope" was pretty tame, especially considering the kind of material within the trailer itself. This critical piece of marketing for Jordan Peele's third directorial effort wasn't criticized for being homophobic or raunchy, but rather for featuring moments that viewers considered too spoilery. In the wake of the trailer's release, think pieces emerged on how many "Nope" plot turns and developments had been given away, including a big set piece involving the UFO known as Jean Jacket spilling gallons of blood on the Haywood family house.

While these trailer moments were perceived by many to have gone too far in trying to get general moviegoers excited to see "Nope," it's doubtful Peele himself was very flustered by the presence of such obvious spoilers. When his feature "Us" was being released," Peele explained to Digital Spy that he had enough confidence in general moviegoers that they wouldn't spoil the experience of seeing one of his movies for others. He said that making movies with surprising twists means that you have to see it for yourself, so any worries about spoilers, including concerns of overly informative trailers, seem to roll off this filmmaker's back. The internet, on the other hand, was much more upset over certain scenes being given away in trailers for "Nope."

There were lots of trailers for "Suicide Squad." Like, a lot. Heck, the movie managed to debut two radically different trailers at two separate San Diego International Comic-Cons. While these trailers generated lots of excitement for the then-upcoming DC Extended Universe feature, these trailers weren't devoid of criticism. Specifically, the various trailers for "Suicide Squad" were criticized for moments that were perceived to objectify and dehumanize Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. A moment in the second trailer lingering on Quinn's butt as she bends over to pick up a stolen purse and another scene in a separate trailer holding the camera on Quinn's exposed chest as she changes her shirt especially earned people's ire.

Sometimes, movie trailers offer misleading perceptions of the features they're promoting, with the final film being much more nuanced than a brief trailer. Unfortunately, these uncomfortable moments involving Harley Quinn in the "Suicide Squad" trailers were harbingers of the final product's dismal attitude toward women. Upon the release of "Suicide Squad," a barrage of articles emerged critiquing this comic book movie for treating its female characters poorly and especially letting down Robbie's committed performance as Harley Quinn with subpar writing. Tragically, those sexist moments involving Harley from the "Suicide Squad" trailers were a perfect microcosm of larger problems in the movie they were promoting.

On paper, it's hard to imagine that any moment from a trailer for "The Tigger Movie" could be perceived as "controversial" in any sense of the word. However, the initial trailer for this film stirred up some discourse thanks to its song of choice. Initially, the primary trailer for "The Tigger Movie" was set to Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life," a bouncy tune with a chorus of "do do do's" that sound, devoid of context, like they're perfect for matching the energy of Tigger. However, anyone anywhere of the lyrical content of this 1997 tune knows it actually covers darker material about drug use (specifically crystal meth) and one's existence crumbling into pieces, complete with phrases like "she goes down on me" explicitly referencing sex acts.

That's not the kind of material one immediately associates with the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood, and an outcry followed the trailer's release. Eventually, a Disney spokesperson came forward to claim the studio had no clue about the darker implications of "Semi-Charmed Life" and that the trailer would be pulled. Ironically, this whole controversy feels so old-fashioned in the modern world, when adult-skewing tunes like "Bad Guy" are used as needle drops in animated kid's movie trailers. It appears this divisive element of that "Tigger Movie" trailer was just ahead of the curve.

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The "Paranormal Activity" franchise is not about rampant blood and guts spilling out all over the silver screen, but rather lengthy periods of domestic normalcy suddenly getting upended by supernatural frights. These jump scares aren't every horror fan's cup of tea, but they've certainly proved popular enough to garner the "Paranormal Activity" movies a huge fanbase. These kinds of scares have also garnered the franchise a lot of notoriety, as seen by the first trailer for "Paranormal Activity 2." This piece of marketing is mostly composed of security footage of a family's seemingly empty house until, suddenly, the camera cuts to a shot of a shadowy figure in a baby's room. It's a moment meant to give viewers a massive jolt, but for some moviegoers, it was too much scariness to handle.

After debuting in theaters on screenings of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," a slew of Cinemark theaters in Texas pulled the "Paranormal Activity 2" teaser. This development came after moviegoers registered a slew of complaints with the theater chain about how uncomfortably terrifying the trailer was. The younger core demo of the PG-13 "Eclipse" was likely not an ideal audience for the first teaser for an R-rated horror movie. Nevertheless, this "Paranormal Activity 2" teaser reinforced how this franchise's specific brand of frights can wring very pronounced reactions out of any moviegoer.

The first trailer for "Peter Rabbit" could've easily been cobbled together by an artificial intelligence program. Beginning with serious narration, accompanied by a chorus of angelic bird singers, intoning that this is the story of Peter, the titular critter soon rams into those singing birds and kick-starts the trailer's irreverent tone. From here, the first trailer for "Peter Rabbit" depicts Peter and all his animal comrades partying the night away. Peter himself is especially rambunctious, doing a rabbit version of twerking and throwing out lettuce leaves like they're dollars at a strip club. The whole trailer ends with lengthy screaming, like so many other trailers for modern kids' movies.

Needless to say, the endlessly generic "Peter Rabbit" trailer was not popular with many people, especially since it felt like a sacrilegious adaptation of the classic children's book character crafted by Beatrix Potter. Major British media outlets like The Guardian were especially disgusted by the trailer, viewing it as an excessive and misguided attempt to "Americanize" a distinctly British and kindhearted literary icon like Peter Rabbit. The fact that the whole trailer felt so cribbed from other modern family movies (right down to the casting of James Corden as Peter, fresh off his roles in "The Emoji Movie" and "Trolls") only exacerbated the flames of hatred that instantly greeted countless moments from the first "Peter Rabbit" trailer.

Back in 2009, every new movie starring high school characters was perceived by studio executives as a new attempt to get some of the mountains of cash generated by the "High School Musical" franchise. It didn't matter whether or not the feature itself fit that mold — the studio was still going to market it in a manner that evoked memories of Troy Bolton and company. This phenomenon was especially apparent in the trailer for the 2009 film "Bandslam" (starring "High School Musical" alum Vanessa Hudgens), which tried to sell the motion picture as something breezy and light. "Bandslam" ended up tanking at the box office, a far cry from the financial success of "High School Musical," leading people to critique the trailer for promoting the title as something it wasn't.

In the wake of the box office failure of "Bandslam," Deadline ran a lengthy piece analyzing the various failing of the film's trailer, particularly how this piece of marketing sanded off the edges of the feature's appealingly adult tone. There were also complaints about how the trailers misled audiences into thinking Hudgens was just playing a rehash of her "High School Musical" character instead of an exciting, new, and more complicated figure. The trailer was just a mess and made "Bandslam" the rare example of a movie trailer that garnered controversy after the film it was promoting had been released. After all, the "Bandslam" trailer seemed egregiously inaccurate once folks saw the final product and liked it much more than its generic marketing.

Before Tom Cruise's first movie as Jack Reacher was unleashed into movie theaters in December 2012, the biggest controversy surrounding the feature was about Cruise's height. Fans of the books took the internet in anger over the perception that Cruise was way too short to portray a fictional character whose supposed to be 6-foot-5 in the original novels penned by Lee Child. 

However, after the debut of "Jack Reacher," another aspect of this production caught the ire of people. Specifically, a shot from the trailer involving an explosion didn't make it into the final cut of "Jack Reacher," an omission one moviegoer sought legal action over. In 2013, just months after "Jack Reacher" premiered, a New Zealand moviegoer filed a complaint after Paramount Pictures dared to include that memorable exploding cliff in the trailer for "Jack Reacher" but didn't feature the stunt in the actual movie. Paramount Pictures eventually gave this fellow the money he spent on a "Jack Reacher" ticket back, but the controversy over this omitted action beat is now forever etched into the history of the Jack Reacher character. Considering all this noise over this particular "Jack Reacher" trailer moment, Paramount and everyone else involved in this Tom Cruise star vehicle likely wish all the controversy over this action film had remained centered around the leading man's stature.

Since the earliest days of his filmmaking career, "The Creator" director Gareth Edwards has always loved shooting his movies in real locations. Back when he was promoting his directorial debut "Monsters" in 2010," Edwards explained to D Magazine that he believed there was an authenticity to the performances and scenery captured in shooting on location that you couldn't replicate on a soundstage. Since those days, Edwards has shot his biggest blockbusters in real places and then added CGI monsters, droids, and mechanical humans on top of those recognizable locales. Unfortunately, the marketing for "The Creator" went in a much more controversial direction in merging reality with sci-fi imagery when it came to the film's second trailer, which reportedly employed footage of an actual devastating explosion that occurred in Beirut in 2020.

Given all the deaths and destruction that was caused by that real-world event, many found it to be in incredibly poor taste that footage from this explosion would be used to promote a big Disney blockbuster. Edwards later explained in a Reddit Q&A that the footage had only appeared in the trailer as an accident and a result of VFX artists often using archival footage as a basis for temporary VFX. He also clarified that this footage is not in the final cut of "The Creator." Still, even with this clarification, the trailer of "The Creator" provided a darker example of what happens when reality and sci-fi cinema collide.