The Amazing Spider-Man Posters

This poster gives an impressive amount of prime space to the man-made web shooter. I understand that this is one of the differences between this reboot and the not-so-old movies, but, ahmmm, I think there are, like, three people in the whole world who care.

Outside of this little detail, I’m really not sure what the point of this particular poster is. What is the big visual thing we are supposed to take from it? What about it is supposed to excite us? What does it add to the rest of the poster campaign? Are we supposed to be in awe of the spider symbol that is formed by the street lights? Because, although I like that idea in theory, I actually failed to notice it the first few times I was looking at this poster. And I was looking closely.

And here is another one.

The whole poster campaign so far has a dark and brooding feel that kind of reminds me of the last few Batman movies. Just two problems with that.

First, the execution doesn’t come close to being as good as what we saw for Batman. This is how you make your hero’s symbol appear in the city. Nobody is missing that one. The imagery in the Spider-Man campaign has been surprisingly dull. The city in particular is just looks incredibly uninteresting and generic.

Second, Spider-Man is not Batman! Yes, many people love Batman. Yes, many people love Spider-Man. Yes, many people love both of them! But for different reasons. Each character has it’s own strong points, and I’m getting the feeling that this marketing campaign just doesn’t know what the ones for Spider-Man are. I really hope the actual movie is much better in this aspect.

(Via)

The Avengers Get Together (In a Poster)

Well, it’s really by the book. All of our heroes against a city in de midst of being destructed. Iron-Man front and center. No one wearing masks. Gets the point across, but doesn’t show much in terms of style. And certainly doesn’t take any risk at all with the material.

Probably will do the job of serving as a reminder that the film is coming. Doesn’t add any excitement beyond what was there already.

(Via)

First The Dark Knight Rises Poster

So, if your question was “Will The Dark Knight Rises have some awesome posters?” the answer turns out to be yes, very much so.

It must be fun designing posters for this movie. You get a bunch of iconic symbols and characters to work with. It’s the third outing in this particular series, so everybody pretty much knows the gist and you don’t need explain much to them. And the poster campaign will probably have many, many posters, which allows a little more risk taking in each of them.

Now, that doesn’t mean coming up with some great posters is easy. Coming up with great posters is never easy. But it does make it at least possible.

UK and France Represent

Last week I, very lightly, mocked the repetition of some design decisions in the posters for the X-Men series. Well, Today France totally shut me up.

Different characters in every poster! Well, one or two different characters in every poster, but still…

I have to admit that, as far as selling the movie goes, this is probably a decent design. But the decision to use several small variations still amuses me.

(Via IMPAwards)

In Case You Forgot

The Finnish would like you to know it’s X-MEN Origins: Wolverine

At least this time they don’t seem to be walking.

(Via IMPAwards)

Wolverine Poster

Seeing this poster you might find yourself remembering this other poster:

Those claws, they sure are useful. They can represent a three if you’re advertising the third X-Men film, or they can represent a W if you are advertising the first Wolverine movie. Is there anything they can’t do?

Well, I guess it would be hard to make a D. Hmmm.

I’m a little torn about this poster. On one hand it is hard not to think back to the last X-Men poster when seeing those claws. On the other hand having the claws on top of Wolverine’s face makes for a dark and angry poster, which somewhat limits it’s appeal. I think X-Men had a broader than expected appeal due to the large and varied cast of characters, which included several women. This film might find replicating that appeal hard.

On the third hand, this is Wolverine, so what are you gonna do? Show a romantic poster of Logan smiling and holding tight some girl as they take a stroll down the park?

(Via IMPAwards)

Ending With a Whimper, Not a Bang

The Watchmen poster campaign has mostly kept a coherent visual style and used well the fascinating characters. This poster gets all of those characters together and keeps the same visual style, so I guess I can’t complain about it too much. Still, it’s sort of a dull ending for a campaign that had a great source material (composed of still images even) and that did manage to produce a couple of terrific posters.

The main problem is that is a uninspiring, run-of-the-mill “team” design for a movie whose top selling point is stunning and one of a kind visuals. The creativity and energy that is expected to be seen in the actual movie is missing, even if some of the elements of it (the background and the character designs) are there. And that is just too bad.

(Via Yahoo! Movies and IMPAwards)

The Spirit Final Poster

And so one of the more interesting poster campaigns of this year is coming to a close. Honestly, although I still think it’s quite a good campaign, it peaked too soon. That teaser poster was everything I wanted the posters for this film to be: sharp, strong and with a clear and unique visual style. The posters that came after it showed us more of the characters, which seems wise, but could never really get back to that level visually. And the recent addition of oranges and browns to the posters isn’t making me too happy.

Which is not to say that this last poster isn’t good. It is very creative, energetic and has several distinctive elements. But it ultimately lacks a clear message selling the film or a truly recognizable and unique visual style that could propel the movie in to people’s must see list. So, as a marketing instrument I think it is less effective than I would have liked. And although I enjoy looking at it very much, the teaser is what might eventually make its way to my wall one of these days.

(Updated with slightly revised version from Cinematical)

(Via Casty the Clown and MyCityScreams Blog)

Who Watches the Watchers of the Watchmen Posters

Comic Books always struck me as a medium uniquely fit for movie adaptations. After all, they both tell stories through pictures and words.

And if that is true for the transition between comic books and movies it’s even more true for the transition between comic books and movie posters. Giving a good source material (and Watchmen certainly qualifies) it’s easy to create a good poster simply by picking the right image. And we have seen a few good watchmen posters that did something like that. The poster above is a good example.

In the case of Watchmen however we start hitting some trouble once we get into a close-up of the characters. Maybe with time I’ll get used to them, but right now the transition from drawing to live action isn’t quite convincing me. especially in the case of Ozymandias, who looks too young and quite silly. Which could be a big problem.

Maybe I’ll like them better after a while. We’ll see.

(Via here, and here, and this other place, and yet this other place, and yet one more place, and finally this other place. And IMPAwards, of course)

Punisher: War Zone Lenticular Poster

Lenticular posters are those 3D/moving things you sometimes see on you local cineplex. As you can imagine it’s not very easy to tell exactly the effect one of those will have in real life from a picture on the internet. For example, I quite liked this poster when I first saw it, but I was muuuuuch more impressed when I saw the actual thing.

So, I’m imagining this lenticular Punisher poster will look quite cool. In the real thing the guns are mounted on the outside of the lightbox, which should make for an even more striking effect. But honestly, it’s hard to tell just how good (or bad) it is just from this image.

So, if you spot the actual poster let me know what you thought of it. And if I see it I’ll update the post.