There is a lot going on behind the scenes in film. On one hand, you have the film’s production team trying to adhere to a strict shooting schedule. On the other, you have the marketing team trying to put together sizzle trailers to entice movie-goers to come out and see the film. A lot of times these teams are working separate from each other, so mistakes can happen. One example of this was with Gareth Edward’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The trailers for Rogue One had a ton of shots that never made it into the final film. There are two iconic popular shots from the Spider-Man: Homecoming trailers that didn’t make it into the film.
In a recent interview with ScreenCrush, director Jon Watts spoke about the shot of Spider-Man and Iron Man flying through Queens that is absent from the final cut of the film:
“I think what happened was in the very first trailer they wanted a shot of Spider-Man and Iron Man flying together, and they were going to use something from the Staten Island Ferry [scene], but it just didn’t look that great, the background plate, because the Staten Island terminal is a very simple building. It almost looks like an unrendered 3D object. So I think I was like ‘Let’s just put them in Queens. Let’s use that as a backdrop.’ Because we couldn’t just create a whole new shot, so let’s just use one of these shots of the subway; put them in there.”
This is a big shot in the trailers, but isn’t in the film for reasons you will know when you watch the film. It is an example of how the marketing team and the production team are operating separately from one another. You can blame Iron Man’s popularity for this shot. Robert Downey, Jr.’s presence in the film will sell ticket, unfortunately the film wasn’t finished when the first trailer needed to go up.
“I feel a little weird that there’s a shot in the trailer that’s not in the movie at all, but it’s a cool shot. It’s funny, I forgot that we did that.”
Watts said:
The hotel atrium shot was originally created for Comic-Con, for like a sizzle reel before we had really shot anything; we had shot like two weeks of footage or something. That was never meant to be in the movie. But I did use that angle for Vulture’s reveal at the beginning of the movie; Vulture’s hovering, swooping towards the camera like that. I used that shot, it’s just no longer in an Atlanta hotel atrium.
Creating shots excessively for trailers appears to be a recent trend, although most directors don’t agree with the practice.
Do you think that this is misleading viewers, or are you o.k. with the practice to perform epic shots? Should studios just stick to showing footage in trailers that made the final cut? Let us know in the comments section below!
