‘Materialists’ Proved To Be a Hit, but Is It the Movie People Were Expecting?

Some movies are easier to get people out of their homes and into movie theaters than others — sequels, franchise movies, remakes, and reboots of popular animated classics, for instance — but that’s only to an extent. An original movie like Celine Song‘s sophomore feature, Materialists, may have had a tougher time, if not for its three bona fide stars in Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. Song‘s previous movie, Past Lives, received two Oscar nominations after receiving critical acclaim, beginning at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2023, but A24 decided to take a different approach with Materialists by not premiering it at any festival and just relying on more traditional marketing. It’s hard to imagine A24 would have to do very much besides touting Song’s big-name cast, but the studio decided to take a very different approach in the way it sold Song’s latest.

Despite not going the festival route, Materialists still received mostly positive reviews, although the critics were not as gushing in their praise as Past Lives. Even so, Song’s sophomore feature opened with an impressive $12 million this past weekend, making it A24’s third-biggest opening, so that’s great, right? Except that the movie ended up receiving a “B-” CinemaScore from audiences polled on opening night, which is quite disheartening for those who did enjoy the movie, including many film critics. Part of that may have been due to the two very different trailers released by A24, neither of which did a very good job of fully representing the movie’s true tone and intent.

The First Trailer for ‘Materialists’ Made It Look Like a Light Romantic Comedy

The first trailer for Materialists arrived in mid-March with much anticipation, not so much just due to the love for Song’s first feature, but also due to its cast. It introduces us to Johnson’s Lucy, a New York-based matchmaker who is trying to find the best mate for her clients through various dates. As we learn in the trailer, she’s very successful at her job with nine clients getting married, but she has her own love life issues, something that changes when she meets Pascal’s “unicorn” Harry, essentially the perfect man in many of the key factors Lucy’s clients seek. We also meet Chris Evans as John, Lucy’s struggling actor ex, another element in the trailer that seemed to be pointing towards the type of love triangle rom-com that we’ve seen so many times from the major studios.

Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal in Materialists

Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans Just Made a New Romance Classic With Celine Song’s ‘Materialists’

Between ‘Materialists’ and her previous film, ‘Past Lives,’ Song is one of the best filmmakers creating romance movies today.

The first trailer for Materialists went out of its way to make the movie look more like the movies that directors Nora Effron (Sleepless in Seattle), Nancy Meyers (The Holiday), or Garry Marshall (Valentine’s Day) might have made in the ’80s or ’90s. It came complete with a cover of Madonna’s “Material Girl,” laying it on thick that Materialists was the type of romantic-comedy film that might be more befitting a Valentine’s Day date. The first trailer also featured “My Baby (Got Nothing At All),” an uncharacteristically cutesy song from Michelle Zauner aka Japanese Breakfast, harking back to songs that have been shoehorned into earlier studio rom-coms. Maybe it didn’t seem like too big a stretch, since Johnson had done her fair share of romantic dramas and comedies, most notably the hit Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, but in the midst of those, Johnson also made her first foray into straight-up rom-coms with 2016’s How to Be Single.

‘Materialists’ Second Trailer Was Even More Confounding

One month before Materialists’ release and before reviews had begun to appear, A24 released a second trailer for the movie. This one seemed even more un-A24-like, and possibly even further from what Song had intended as a filmmaker. Firstly, it back-tracked any comedic aspects of the plot and added a traditional movie trailer narrator explaining Lucy’s situation, for anyone who couldn’t figure it out the first time. Anyone who saw either trailer and expected Materialists to be this light romantic comedy may have felt blindsided by all the serious dramatic moments later in the movie.

To dig deeper into that “B-” CinemaScore and why it’s such a worrying thing, we only have to look back at some of the most popular romantic comedies of the past forty years. For the longest time, it was a very popular film genre, and in the ’80s and ’90s, Meg Ryan was the queen of the studio rom-com with movies like When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail. All three of those movies were either co-written, written, or directed by the late, great Nora Ephron. Those movies received “A+,” “A,” and “A-” CinemScores, respectively, but at least the first two are considered absolute classics and standards for the romantic comedy genre. Even Nancy Meyers‘ 2000 movie What Women Want, a huge box office hit putting Mel Gibson with Helen Hunt into a high-concept meet-cute, received a “B+” CinemaScore.

There’s nothing wrong with a well-made romantic comedy, but that didn’t feel like what Song was trying to achieve with Materialists. Instead, it sets up a typical rom-com premise with Lucy having to decide between these two very different men — one rich, handsome, and tall, the other being Chris Evans’ struggling schlub who can barely make ends meet — then transforms the movie into a serious exploration of relationships and what people see as their perfect mate. And yet, that last bit may have been why many critics praised Materialists more than they might have a traditional studio rom-com. Regardless, Materialists’ CinemaScore is the real story, and that shows that audiences went into Song’s film expecting one thing, got something completely different. For many, that isn’t considered bad marketing, as much as it’s considered straight-up false advertising.