5 Hilarious Attempts To Rebrand Movies After The Fact

Did we mention the blood?

After the Rebranding:

And according to this DVD cover, it's the next installment of the Twilight franchise.

Can you copyright a shitty vibe?

Pale-skinned broody boy vampire, innocent girl human, their forbidden love -- you know the drill. This updated cover could not be further, atmospherically speaking, from the movie itself. We can't help but picture hormonal, tween Twilight fans grabbing the movie in search of their next romantic monster fix, only to find Bill Motherfucking Paxton's crazy, people-eating grin...

When you think "sexy" and "vampire" you may as well be saying "Bill Paxton."

And Lance Henriksen's weathered mullet.

If you look directly into it, you can see how you'll die.

"You're not going to like where this needle is going."

...And their duels to the death.

"You're not going to like where this sword is going."

...And their encounters with a creepy owl that will scar any children witnessing it for life.

It's that same son of a bitch owl we all hated from Ocarina Of Time.

It was a dark and complex film, more Watership Down than Rescue Rangers.

After the Rebranding:

"Look, I was hungry when I wrote that blurb." -- Rex Reed

Well, that looks like a wacky good time! The DVD release of NIMH really pushed it as a movie about a family of friendly mice and a goofy crow who go around having adventures. Now, there was a crow in the movie for comedic relief, and there was a family, and we suppose if "trying to move your home so your sick child doesn't get caught in the farmer's thresher" counts as an adventure, we guess it had that, too. But it's all about tone, and any parent renting the film based on that bright, cartoony charm-fest of a cover up there is in for a surprise when, after watching, their kids can only ask "Mommy, what's LSD?"

So the average Jets fan actually.

And when we say, "dark," we mean "a descent into madness and obsession from the guy who wrote The Wrestler." It's a good flick, and funny in its way. It's just that that "way" is more Requiem For A Dream than Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

After the Rebranding:

They used the only scene in the movie where his character is kind of smiling.

That cover makes Big Fan look like everything that it isn't: a bright and sunny film full of football action, in which Oswalt finds his spirits uplifted by the team he loves. There's absolutely no footage of football in the movie at all. It's kind of one of the points of the story: It's not about the sport, it's about obsession.

Like how obsessed we are with never wanting to see Patton Oswalt look this sad.

But that dark, poetic take on the nature of fandom didn't stop the studios from slapping some stock sports photo on the DVD cover, picking the one frame where Patton looks like Rudy, and hoping audiences interpret that one scene where Oswalt sadly jerks off into a sock as base physical comedy.

Honestly, this is the best possible outcome when involving the words "van" and "sex."

If it has a plot at all, it can be summed up thusly: Teens try to have sex with each other, a van is around, and Danny DeVito plays a minor character. It's basically half-assed softcore porn, and that's somehow much more offensive than regular porn. It's Porky's, but in a van! Sometimes!

"Can't spell 'Fun-Truckin' without 'fuckin'!"

Just look at this. You can practically hear the slide whistle.

After the Rebranding:

Somehow the "we filmed a van" genre failed to make its mark on history, so whichever poor soul paid $1.50 and a gas station sandwich for the home-video rights to The Van had to do some creative rebranding. Strangely, they went for more of a The Hills Have Eyes vibe.

The new cover has so little faith in the original movie that not only is Danny DeVito's head blocking all the actual major characters, it isn't even Danny DeVito as he appears in the film. On the new cover is Danny DeVito as we best recognize him today, but The Van is from 1977. This was Danny DeVito back then:

Looking stud-- looking handso-- looking young. Looking very young.

So they picked a bit character in the film who just happened to find eventual success, ripped a still from one of his movies filmed decades later, and then tinted the whole thing "kill you orange." If somebody was grabbing The Van based on that leering, horror-toned cover, they probably weren't hoping for some chuckles and light masturbation material. Unless it was Danzig. And he was almost certainly disappointed with what he got.

Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs.

Also check out 5 Superheroes Rendered Ridiculous By Gritty Reboots and If Every Kids' Show Got A Gritty Live-Action Reboot.

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