Robert Rodriguez Admits That The Predators Trailer Lied Right To Your Face On Purpose
Robert Rodriguez is a director who makes movies for people who love movies. Whether it’s something for adults (DESPERADO or GRINDHOUSE) or even children (SPY KIDS), Rodriguez tries to draw you into his films as a fan first, and a critical mind second. But, as a producer, on PREDATORS, Rodriguez tossed all of that aside with the help of 20th Century Fox to lie right to your face in the flick’s trailer, in order to sucker you in on opening weekend based entirely on false pretenses.
For those of you who may have seen PREDATORS, you might have noticed the distinct lack of the iconic shot from the trailer, with Adrien Brody absolutely smothered by laser sights of at least a dozen Predators, giving you the sense that this dude is fucked. There is a similar shot in the film, in a similar location, that has Brody put on lock by a single laser sight, but, because our expectations have been built up so greatly, it feels so disappointing and underwhelming.
It’s a good thing Robert Rodriguez has an explanation for why the scene played out that way across the trailer and, more importantly, the movie – it was planned that way.
In an interview with MTV News, Rodriguez addressed the complaints by movie-goers who feel as if they were bamboozled with the change. “You don’t want people to always know. A lot of my movies have trailer shots that I shoot just for the trailer, so that people haven’t seen the movie already but they get the feeling of what it’s supposed to represent… It’s kind of a good twist to do that. If you go and you think that’s what it’s going to be, and then it’s not that and it ends up happening in another place in the movie.”
Ummm… except it’s not a good twist. It’s a flat-out lie, and basically trickery being used to get people into the theatre expecting to see a different movie than the one that’s delivered. That’d be like the equivalent of me watching the trailer for INDEPENDENCE DAY, where they blow the shit out of everything, and kill all these people, and there’s all sorts of destruction prior to a massive alien invasion, and then I go and watch the movie and it’s about Keira Knightley putting together a large tea party in Victorian England… and no explosions are in sight. I would call that bullshit… whereas Robert Rodriguez would apparently call that a good twist that prevents me from knowing for sure.
Well, had PREDATORS opened to big bucks, I would have said “Well played, sir.” But, because it didn’t, I can now say “Screw you, asshole. No wonder 1/2 the movie sucked badly.”
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