Part of the issue is here is a failure to understand how trailers are made. You probably believe that the film is shot, edited, then the trailer is made. The shooting time line doesn’t allow for this because in many cases the marketing for a large Hollywood film starts up to a year or more in advance. Often trailers are cut based on PRINCIPAL footage. The reason the best parts were in the trailer? Because those scenes will be in the movie.

If you’re really observant, you may notice that some scenes in trailers were not in the movie. And in at least one case, a minor actress who was featured in the trailer and the posters, was cut from the final product. I can’t speak specifically about Drive, but I’d be willing to guess when the trailer was formed, the producers knew the car chases were definately in the movie, but the rest of the story line was a work in progress. They probably had a good idea what it would look like, but it’s pretty embarassing when half the scenes in the trailer are on the editing room floor. So they took the safe route – show the car chases.

Those scenes are in the movie, but you may feel that it was misleading, well, here’s the subjectiveness. All the scenes in the trailer are in the movie, so it was not false, but you were expecting more car scenes. To use your analogy, you bought a frozen dinner with a picture of a big juicy chicken drumstick, but when you opened the package, you received a tiny one instead. Still may be false advertising, but when you consider how and when trailers are made, you can understand how misperceptions rise.

Not to mention to fact that it is standard practice for studios to purposely jigger trailers to focus on certain aspects of their films to target specific demos. We all have seen markably different trailers for the same film, each one highlighting different scenes or actors, using thematic hip-hop music for the ad on Adult Swim, AC/DC type music when the ad airs during a football game, wimpy, sensitive acoustic music for the ‘Housewives’ watchers, etc.

How dare those studios beguile and seduce us with purposed flashy ads for their products? It’s like all they want is to make money or something! If only there was a way to find out about those films before we shell out our hard earned cash, like some sort of electronic thingy that connects to other electronic doodads and somehow forms images and words on a tv like screen to communicate… oh, if only.

That kind of misrepresentation is very rare, which is why I quoted the BoxOfficeGuru blog above that remarked on its presence. He wouldn’t have remarked on it if its occurrence had not been so unusual.

An analogy would be if you buy a pack of frozen food with a picture of a chicken drumstick on it but instead you got sliced frozen turkey. Whether turkey is “better” or “worse” than chicken is irrelevant to a claim that the frozen food’s advertising misrepresented turkey as chicken. (It’s relevant to damages perhaps, but not to liability).

Personally, I haven’t seen the movie, but having seen Ryan Gosling’s insufferable preening in “Lincoln Lawyer” I strongly suspect this lawsuit will be a whole lot more fun to watch than the movie would be.