Oh, for the love of God, somebody hold my beer! 🍺 It looks like the House of Mouse and its spandex-clad cash cows are doubling down on their glorious tradition of jazzing up their movie trailers – or, to put it bluntly, stuffing them with cool-looking crap you absolutely will not see in the actual damn movie. 🙄 And guess what? The upcoming epic (?) known as “Thunderbolts” is getting the exact same smoke-and-mirrors treatment. This steaming hot take comes straight from the horse’s mouth, or rather, from David Harbour, the guy squeezed into the Red Guardian suit, who apparently missed the memo about keeping corporate secrets:
“It was funny watching the marketing,” Harbour chuckled, probably while counting his Disney dollars 💰, “because they were putting little bits and pieces in the trailers that aren’t even in the movie ‘Thunderbolts,’ but that they used for the promos.”
🤣 LOL! Disney thinks you’re STUPID? Red Guardian EXPOSES Marvel’s Trailer LIES! Fans RAGING! 😡💸
But wait, it gets better! Our moles deep inside the Marvel fortress (okay, it was Gary from accounting who overheard something near the water cooler, but still 🤫) whisper that the very first cut of the “Thunderbolts” trailer allegedly contained not a single goddamn frame that was actually in the movie. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Like the chances of a meaningful plot in the next Thor movie. 🤯 Can you grasp the sheer audacity? Marvel isn’t just polishing a turd anymore; they’re building entirely separate, shiny cinematic universes exclusively for two-minute YouTube ads! Kevin Feige, you magnificent bastard, we salute your dedication to the art of the grift! 👏 This isn’t just misleading advertising; it’s practically high-concept performance art about the vapidity of consumer culture, funded by billions of dollars from people arguing online about whether Captain Marvel could beat up Superman. 🦸♀️ vs 🦸♂️ = 🤑
Let’s pause and really marinate in the genius – or perhaps the sheer, unadulterated contempt for the audience – behind this strategy. Picture it: a room full of stressed-out marketing execs in identical grey hoodies, mainlining artisanal coffee ☕, staring at a whiteboard. “Okay team,” says Chad, the VP of Synergy Hype, “the focus groups say the movie is… ‘fine.’ 🤷♂️ But we need to sell tickets! Enough tickets to fund Bob Iger’s next yacht! Ideas?” Then, some millennial wunderkind named Skylar, adjusting their non-prescription glasses, pipes up: “What if… stay with me here… what if we make a trailer that has nothing to do with the actual movie? Like, literally nothing? We’ll grab some B-roll from ‘Endgame,’ splice in a clip from a PS5 cutscene, maybe use AI to deepfake Tom Holland doing a TikTok dance with Kang, slap on the logo – BAM! Viral sensation!” 🤩 And the horrifying part? It works! Every. Single. Time. The legions of Marvel faithful, Pavlovian-conditioned by post-credit scenes and desperate Reddit theories, will gobble up anything featuring their favorite action figures. Show them a trailer where Ant-Man debates critical race theory with MODOK while sponsored by MyPillow, and they’ll crash Fandango arguing if it’s canon and signals the introduction of the ‘Woke Warriors’ phase. 🏳️🌈 vs MAGA = More 🤑. Marvel’s marketing department knows exactly which buttons to push: our primal fear of missing out (FOMO is the real villain of the MCU!), our insatiable curiosity, and our pathetic need to feel included in the cultural conversation. Why risk showing actual footage that might be boring, reveal a plot hole the size of Galactus’s helmet, or accidentally trigger some perpetually offended blue-checkmark Twitter mob 🐦 or, conversely, some insecure dude-bro complaining about “forced diversity” because a woman spoke for more than 30 seconds? Nah. It’s safer to just blend a visually spectacular smoothie of broken promises. It generates buzz, fuels endless speculation based on literal fantasy, and keeps the hype train chugging along. Then, you sit in the theater, munching your $20 popcorn 🍿, thinking, “Huh. Where was that scene where Red Guardian arm-wrestled a Sentinel? And why isn’t Yelena riding a laser shark like in the trailer?” But tough luck, sucker! They already got your money. Mission accomplished! 👍
Now, let’s be fair – ish. This bait-and-switch routine isn’t exactly a Marvel-patented invention. Hollywood has been perfecting the art of the misleading trailer since movies had sound. Remember those action flicks where the trailer shows the only two explosion scenes on a loop? 💥😴 Or those comedies where every single funny line (all three of them) is spoiled in the preview? Or those prestige dramas marketed as edge-of-your-seat thrillers that turn out to be two hours of sad people staring out of rainy windows? 🌧️ It’s standard operating procedure in a world fighting for eyeballs. Marketing is war, and truth is the first casualty, especially when you’re trying to sell a mediocre product wrapped in shiny IP. But Marvel? Oh, they’ve taken it to the big leagues. They’re not just cutting around the boring parts or hiding spoilers; they are allegedly manufacturing reality specifically for promotional purposes! It’s like McDonald’s showing you a gourmet Wagyu burger 🍔 in the ad, then handing you that sad, grey patty, but instead of a fine-print disclaimer, Kevin Feige just winks 😉 and points to the box office numbers. And the sheer, unmitigated gall of David Harbour just casually dropping this bomb like, “Yeah, it was kinda funny”? Funny?! David, my dude, millions of fans worldwide dissect these trailers like the Zapruder film, building entire universes of expectation, and you find it “funny” that they’re being fed a diet of expensive lies? 😂 Or maybe… maybe that’s the play? Maybe Harbour is playing 4D chess, dropping a “truth bomb” that’s actually just more calculated hype generation? In this post-truth, meta-everything hellscape, who even knows what’s real anymore? Maybe the “Thunderbolts” movie doesn’t even exist! Maybe it’s all an elaborate ARG leading to a new Disney+ subscription tier! Maybe Harbour’s comments were AI-generated by Disney’s legal team to preemptively normalize trailer deception! My brain hurts. 😵💫
So, what’s a poor, exploited pop culture consumer to do in the face of such blatant chicanery? Well, you’ve got options. 1) Throw a tantrum online. 🤬 Start a doomed Change.org petition demanding #ReleaseTheRealTrailerCut. Declare a boycott of Disney products (good luck with that, literally everything is Disney now). 2) Become a bitter cynic. Watch trailers purely as exercises in absurdist comedy, knowing full well it’s 90% bullshit. Rate movies based solely on how much the trailer lied. 📉 3) Go full ostrich. 🤷♀️ Bury your head in the sand, ignore all trailers, walk into the theater completely blind, relying only on the totally unbiased opinions of Rotten Tomatoes critics (lol jk, they’re bought too 😉). Or… 4) Embrace the madness. 🎉 Lean into the spectacle. Accept that Marvel isn’t just movies anymore; it’s a multi-billion dollar transmedia empire, a quasi-religion for nerds, a meme-generating machine, and a perpetual engine for online flame wars. The misleading trailers are just part of the circus. Yeah, they lie. Yeah, they manipulate. Yeah, they treat us like gullible sheep 🐑 with disposable income. But damn it, sometimes, as Harbour admitted, it is kinda funny. It’s fascinating, in a horrifying way, to watch the hype machine operate, to see the strings being pulled. Maybe one day we’ll get a trailer that’s just a black screen with scrolling legal text: “WARNING: The following montage contains sequences fabricated for promotional purposes only. Actual film content may vary significantly. Characters, plotlines, and levels of basic competence depicted are not guaranteed. By purchasing a ticket, you waive your right to not be bamboozled. Enjoy the show (or don’t, we already have your money).” 🧾 Now that would be refreshing honesty. Until then, let’s enjoy the high-quality fan-fiction Marvel calls trailers and wait to see what fresh batch of lies “Thunderbolts” serves up next. I wonder if they’ll digitally insert Wolverine into the background just to mess with people? In a Marvel trailer, anything is possible! Especially when the marketing team is involved. 😂
Finn McFrame, celebrated satirical mastermind and self-proclaimed “Emperor of Irony,” started his illustrious career as a cinematographer, where his expertise in capturing every single frame of a squirrel stealing a baguette earned him accolades at obscure film festivals.
Born in the glamorous town of Boring, Oregon, Finn grew up with dreams of being a Hollywood director until he realized that satire, not cinema, was his true calling—or at least the one that let him sleep until noon.
Finn McFrame: changing the world, one satirical lens flare at a time.
