Bad advertising: Warm Bodies

You can't escape marketing.  I just wish it wasn't so damned bad so much of the time. For example,

Frankly my dear, I think I'd notice.

Advertising for this film cropped up around London some time ago. I thought it was a spoof of Twilight. Then I was handed a free copy of the novelization, which looked like this:

Aha! Except it isn't a novelization. The book came first. Nothing about the cover changed my opinion re: Twilight spoof. It looks like it's meant to be funny, maybe a zombie American Pie. Or Shaun of the Dead with attractive American children.

You've got some red on you...

So I read the first page of Warm Bodies and became instantly confused. From paragraph two:

Before I became a zombie I must have been a businessman, a banker or a broker or some young temp learning the ropes, because I'm wearing fairly nice clothes. Black slacks, grey shirt, red tie.

Wait. So it isn't the hero on the cover? Because that kid isn't old enough to be a banker or broker, and he's definitely not wearing a suit. But I have since finished the book, and I can tell you that is the hero. In all his red-hoodied glory.

So what's likely happened here is the movie is far different than the book, the book eventually got the movie cover as its cover, and assumptions were made. Sounds like easy mistakes. But from paragraph three and on:

We like to joke and speculate about our clothes, since these final fashion choices are the only indication of who we were before we became no one. Some are less obvious than mine: shorts and a sweater, skirt and a blouse. So we make random guesses. 

You were a waitress. You were a student. Ring any bells?

It never does. 

No one I know has any specific memories. Just a vague, vestigial knowledge of a world long gone. Faint impressions of past lives that linger like phantom limbs. We recognize civilization--buildings, cars, a general overview--but we have no personal role in it. No history. We are just here. We do what we do, time passes, and no one asks questions. But like I've said, it's not so bad. We may appear mindless, but we aren't. The rusty cogs of cogency still spin, just geared down and down till the outer motion of barely visible. We grunt and groan, we shrug and nod, and sometimes a few words slip out. It's not that different from before.

These are some powerful thoughts. They're memorable. They make the image of our hero stick in my mind, because it tells me right away: this is all he has left. The movie marketing shoves that aside for the sake of ... what, making him age appropriate to the target audience? And it drags the book down with it.

As a writer it's heartbreaking to see such a thought-provoking and unusual story marketed in a dull way. For contrast, here's an alternate cover that has nothing to do with the movie. Spot the difference:

I initially dismissed Warm Bodies because of its dismissable advertising campaign. But now I know it's not actually a teenybopper love story but a Romeo & Juliet-inspired zombie homage to civilization and living life to the fullest, and Romeo & Juliet is just the worst love story ever. But how was I to know? What is there about this that would tell me any of that?