John Carter (In Mars!) Poster

I think this is my favorite John Carter poster so far. Such lovely, epic seeming scenery. And a great pulp book cover style. I’m still not convinced I will like the film, but this poster points at what I want it to be: pulp, epic, bizarre, otherworldly fun.

Which is probably not what everybody wants. And when we talk about a film like this, with a mega budget, the hope must be for something with a very broad, Pirates of the Caribbean like appeal. And I’m really not seeing any that. Not here, not in the other posters.

(Via)

Where The Wild Things Are Poster

This is not my favorite image from Wild Things. Not by far. But I still can’t help but to appreciate the mesmerizing dream like tone that all the posters (and the trailer) for this movie have had. Endless fascinating, even in the lesser incarnations, like the one above.

(Via IMPAwards)

The Day After a Couple Of Years From Now

Well, destroying the White House worked great for the marketing of Independence Day. And a giant wave worked as part of the marketing for The Day After Tomorrow. So why not have a giant wave that destroys the White House? That’s got to double the profits, right?

These posters for 2012 are pretty similar to the equally polished disaster posters for The Day After Tomorrow. And why wouldn’t they be? The premise is very similar, and this sell managed to open TDAT to a pretty nice sum. Why change something that is not (as far as we know) broken?

I do appreciate that the Liberty Statue hasn’t been destroyed again in these. Poor lady had enough disasters for a several lifetimes.

(Via IMPAwards)

Prince of Persia Posters

I think Peter nails it: these posters look like glossy magazine covers. Quite serious and somber glossy magazine covers in fact. Which strikes me as pretty odd, considering this is an epic adventure through an enchanted land. I’m sort of getting the adventure part, but the enchanted land and the epic escape me. Lots of beefcake though.

And doesn’t the Disney logo feel out of place in this image?

A Jake Gyllenhaal staring prince of Persia always struck me as a hard sell, and I have been curious about how they would try to market it. I definitely didn’t expect to see this, a poster that emphasizes so much Jake as very brooding rendition of the prince.

Maybe the idea here is that this type of image, and this depiction of the character, will be attractive to women? And once they convinced women to go see it guys should be an easy sell with some well placed fights and effects on the trailers? That is my best bet at this point, but I wouldn’t be surprised to be wrong. Like I said, kind of an odd choice.

(Via Empire)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Poster

A quick perusal of my posts about the first Transformers informs me the I actually liked its posters much less than I remembered. But there were at least a couple of very good ones. And I was very interested in seeing each and every one of the posters, and was happy to analyze them to death.

The poster campaign for Revenge of the Fallen on the other hand has mostly left me cold. I don’t hate it in any way, but it just failed completely to pick up my interest. The sole exception was the first poster, which was a pretty decent teaser and got me to read a lot about the film, something a hadn’t done up to that point.

A big part of the loss of appeal is that we have now seen the giant robots during one whole film. So seeing a still photo of them doesn’t exactly excite. The pyramid background doesn’t help either. It’s just trying too hard to make the film look like it will have new, exotic and exciting elements. And the pyramids, although awesome, have been exposed to the point where they are no longer immediately impressive by themselves.

In a similar vein there is too much work being put in making the robots look battered up. I guess the idea is to make us believe they have just gone through intense action, but the main effect is to make the poster look uglier and more somber than it needs to be.

As it happens I was watching bits of the first film this weekend. Transformers are cool. The posters are doing a bad job of reminding us of that. And a bad job of making the case for the new things in the sequel.

But then again, not terrible at all. And the movie comes pretty much pre-sold, so probably no harm done.

(Via IMPAwards)

Brothers Bloom Posters

Ok, first off, this is not an official poster for Brothers Bloom. Instead it’s something the director asked his cousin to cook up. Still, it’s worth posting. Even tough I’m not a big fan of this particular drawing I think it still shows the potential drawn posters have to mesmerize and sell movies. Could we perhaps have a little bit more of this type of thing in official posters? Please?

The drawn poster is, for example, much better at conveying the rollicking trip around the world aspect of the movie than this other, very official poster.

The official poster does have one advantage: the orange umbrellas. No really. The orange on the poster is very lively and the umbrellas are offbeat and rather memorable. Still, not enough to really get one hooked. But at least it is something that will catch your eye, and maybe remind you of that trailer you saw online a while ago and that looked so good.

(Via BrothersBloom and FilSchoolRejects)

Three Times Star Trek

The three international posters released for Star Trek today are very different from each other. First we have this one:

Basically the approach here was to use the big heads floating over landscape design and to put in the landscape two of the most striking images found in the trailer: Kirk on a bike and the still being built Enterprise. The end result? kind of a mess.

The second takes an almost directly inverse approach. None of the actors show up, just a striking, CGI filled image of a famous monument interacting with the film’s world. This too is a well known design choice. We saw similar things for example here. And of course here.

The problem? Except for the title there is nothing in the image that says Star Trek. as a matter of fact I’m not completely sure what is going on in the poster.

And then we have this third poster, which feels like a throwback to earlier Star Trek posters, and even more reminds me of some other 80’s style sci-fi imagery. Only everything is very polished, and looks modern. Those older posters right now seem like a very outdated vision of the future. This, not so much.

I like this poster, even tough when you really think about it the image is more or less your standard big floating heads poster. And it even looks like an Iron Man poster I criticized last year. But it fills me with a sense of nostalgia I hadn’t experienced yet. And I think the poster kind of captures what the movie is going to be all about, for better or for worst.

(Via Kinopoisk and IMPAwards)

Land of the Lost Poster

There are a few things about this poster that confuse me.

First, the poster seems to position Land of the Lost as a pretty straight fantasy/adventure. However, both the film and the poster star Will Ferrell, who isn’t exactly known for playing it straight. So, is this a more serious turn for Will? Or is it a more comedic interpretation of the concept?

The second thing is that the poster has a very retro look, both in the contents of the image and in its style. Even the title is reminiscent of the original (and rather old) Land of the Lost. These might mean that the new film embraces it’s roots and updates the original while still maintaining it’s overall feel. But I find it hard to believe they actually went in that direction, especially considering the star.

So basically the poster is telling me this is a reasonably serious fantasy/adventure with a retro look and lots of love for the original, but my prejudices don’t really let me believe that is what the film will actually be. I hope my prejudices are wrong, because that sounds like a movie I might want o watch.

Confusions aside let me just say that I quite like the look of the poster, but the boat and its passengers feel a little out of place. They are both too real and too silly to fit in with the background.

(Via Cinematical)

Separated at Birth: Inkheart and Bedtime Stories

(click on the images to make them larger)

Two films about fantastic stories that come to life? Oh, it’s on. Although since one film has Adam Sandler and the backing of Disney and the other has Brendan Fraser I’m guessing it won’t be much of a fight.

I do think the design in general and the fantastic images in particular of the Inkheart poster are more interesting than those of the Bedtime Stories poster. But Bedtime is more clearly focused on appealing to kids, they are obviously chasing the young kids/families demographic. The target demographic for Inkheart is a bit less clear, but I think they might be trying to reach more teenagers. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don’t think it will be very successful at that.

(Via Yahoo! Movies and IMPAwards)

Authenticity is Overrated

This poster might very well not be an official poster, but is that reason enought not to post it? I say no.

A half angel, half demon statue might be an overly literal visual representation of a movie called Angels & Demons, but you know what? I don’t really care. It works. And the background serves as a nice reminder that this movie is probably going to have lots of travel porn.

Of course the dark mood of the poster and the seemly supernatural elements don’t really seem to fit with what I imagine the tone and story of the movie will be like. I haven’t actually read the book, so perhaps it would seem more fitting if I had, but I was expecting something a little lighter and more grounded.

Then again I’m expecting this movie too suck, so going against my expectations is probably a good thing.

This poster could have worked very well for a classy horror movie. On the other hand, this poster for House couldn’t, which is a shame because this one actually is a horror movie.

Forbidden and dangerous doors are a recurring theme/image and it can be really effective if well handled. But this is more boring than scary.

(Via IMPAwads and WildAboutMovies)