When they market a movie that ended up being mediocre (example would be The Last Knight), they make sure the trailer portrays the movie as if it's an awesome movie when it ended up being either awful or mediocre. But when it comes to a movie with a very compelling story and somewhat likeable and memorable characters, they don't even try with the trailer.

Whoever was in charge of marketing this needs to be fired

Also, the way they just showed us almost ALL the jokes in the very first trailer... It really made them feel a lot weaker.

If it helps reassure you, I’m not a Transformers fan but word of mouth convinced me to watch TFO and I LOVED the movie. It’s a compelling story even though I have such limited knowledge of the franchise.

Okay, to be fair, the second trailer did a MUCH better job at getting across the film’s tone.

On that note, I agree that the first trailer was NOT a good representation of the final product.

It feels like the original intent of the first trailer was to hide the movie’s true nature making it seem like it be a comedy focused on Optimus and co. being rascals in the good days of ancient Cybertron, then the audience would be shocked at the plot twists and reveals that show the movie is more serious than it appeared to be. But because people disliked that approach to the marketing they changed the tone of later ads and blatantly revealed plot twists to try and recover the movie’s reputation, and people never really wanted “a plot about Optimus and Megatron being rascals before the Great War” anyways.

I assume who ever was in charge of marketing, just assumed "its a kids movie, so lets make the trailer super silly"

Someone should make a better trailer with movie footage just to humiliate the marketing department

Its absolutely criminal how badly they fumbled this, that first trailer doesn't do the movie justice at all. That last act and the last post credit was glorious.

I won´t call the marketing of this movie a mistake. I will call it Intentional Sabbotage. Because it can´t all be incompetence. It´s too much bad stuff, too varied, too consistently bad.
And we all know who to point to. Lorenzo.

I was fully expecting B to make jokes during the series moments, but he didn't. When D16 refused to kneel before sentinel, B was there, and stayed silent. When D16 became megatron and started shooting at the city, B was there and had a series look on his face, being just as baffled as Elita

B was a comedic character who loved to talk but also a character who knew to read the room, it's so refreshing

I was pleasantly surprised when Starscream, Shockwave, Soundwave, and some of the seekers appeared in the movie. I did not expect to see these guys and was absolutely geeking when I saw them so I'm glad I didn't see them in the trailers that I've seen.

Transformers One is essentially going through what happened to Treasure Planet back when it first released; a great and enjoyable movie held back by an awful trailer that conveys the wrong tone of the film.

Treasure Planet’s trailer portrays the movie has some generic light-hearted buddy comedy adventure movie with some space pirates involved instead of the actually more emotionally serious coming-of-age story of Jim Hawkings going on this epic adventure to find a fabled planet full of treasure that he heard about in his early youth as a way to prove to himself that he’s more than just some reckless, naive, angsty teenager with no future that others have made him out to be.

Even worse for Treasure Planet was that the trailer also revealed the twist of Long John Silver, a character that Jim at first grows to look up to as a surrogate father figure, being the main antagonist of the movie; effectively revealing too much of the movie’s story while still conveying it has some comedic buddy adventure film.
Also, Ben, a plot important yet comedic relief character who actually doesn’t show up until the third act of the movie, is portrayed as being apart of the entire film in the trailer as well; which only furthers the false idea of the movie being a light-hearted buddy comedy in the trailer to the audience.

Because this false perception the trailer of Treasure Planet made it out to be, the movie got very little reception at the box office and ultimately bombed, despite how great the actual movie is.
This is a fate I hope Transformers One is able to avoid due to good word of mouth about how good the movie actually is spreading farther and faster than its poor managed trailer can affect the general public’s perception on what type of movie it actually is.

Yes, currently at the time of this comment, the movie’s close to breaking even with its budget; but for Transformers One to be able to continue into its pre-planned trilogy, it needs to perform phenomenally at the global box office.

It feels like this movie was left out to die by paramount because they’re ashamed of the franchise.

The movie trailers were so full of cliche Marvel humor they kind of scared me off the film. The tone seemed pretty shallow.

I think it's the middle tone shift that made this movie difficult to market. In the actual movie this progression from a lighthearted adventure into something more complex is very effective, but it also means that the trailers couldn't show much of what people wanted to see without spoiling stuff from the end.

Part of the trailer poorly showing jokes was on the unnecessary commentary/reactions that made everything seem obnoxious. In the movie, some of these jokes were unacknowledged in dialogue and that helped them land, IMO
Example: B didn't say "Woo!" when the wheels popped out and Pax and D's wincing reaction was from an entirely different scene

This movie reminded me a lot of Revenge of the Sith, which IMO, is tied with The Empire Strikes Back as the best Star Wars movie, but this is an origin movie, same as Batman Begins, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America The First Avenger, Guardians of the Galaxy, Man of Steel, however, you're using origin as a synonym for prequel,  X-men Origins Wolverine is a prequel (loosely tied) to Bryan Singer's X-men, Monsters University is a prequel to Monsters Inc, Bumblebee was originally meant to be a prequel to the Bayverse, the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but Transformers One isn't a prequel, it's an origin movie

Honestly at this point I feel like we are fucked, unless my some fucking miracle good word of mouth saves this film, I feel like the series is done for.

It's probably too early, but based on the section around 19:30 it would be fun later to do a deep dive on the first trailer and how each of the the cringe/awkward parts actually fit in context (and how it ultimately soured the perception of the film because they were taken OUT of context)