Million Dollar Baby

[matt35mm]

Whoever worked on the marketing campaign needs to be fired, though; they made it look like an average boxing movie.  Granted, it IS an average boxing movie if you focus on the story alone but the script is good and Eastwood deserved the Best Director Oscar.

Well... since the movie was a big box office success, and Eastwood DID get the Best Director Oscar, I fail to see how the marketing campaign was off.  It WAS marketed as a film starring three Oscar winners and directed by an Oscar winner.  It was marketed as a boxing movie with high pedigree.

I thought the marketing strategy was great, and appropriate for a movie about an underdog boxer, as it allowed for the movie to sneak in and build up tremendous force in the last two months before the Oscars and win over the juggernaut movie (The Aviator).  The hype was built pretty much solely on critics' awards and stuff, and I think it was the strategy from the beginning to let that be the hype-maker.

So by the time people actually started seeing the movie, it was very clear that this was not an "average boxing movie," and it was a good way to achieve that without telling you HOW, storywise, it wasn't just a boxing movie.

But ultimately, you just can't argue with results.  It was made for cheap, made good profit, garnered several Oscars, and you'd better believe that was the marketing plan from the start.

[grand theft sparrow]

by the time people actually started seeing the movie, it was very clear that this was not an "average boxing movie," and it was a good way to achieve that without telling you HOW, storywise, it wasn't just a boxing movie.

But from that god-awful trailer and those horrific radio and TV ads, there was NO way to tell that it wasn't just a boxing movie.  I'm not saying they should have hinted at the ending or something like that, but the ads couldn't have made it look more uninteresting.  I saw the trailer and said, "I've seen Rocky, I've seen Girlfight.  Why do I need to see this?"  Of course, the answer to that question is "Clint Eastwood" but even so, I was in no rush to see this... entirely because the ads were so cringeworthy.  

It was made for cheap, made good profit, garnered several Oscars, and you'd better believe that was the marketing plan from the start.

That's exactly why I think they should be fired.  Regardless of whether the film is guaranteed to win every award ever or is the cinematic antichrist, ad people are supposed to still make the movie look more exciting than it really is.  That trailer showed me a boring movie.