Where Have All the Sci-Fi Posters Gone?
I’ve got two blank spots on the wall behind my TV that are just begging to be filled, so I’ve spent the last few days scouring the web for worthy film posters to fill the void. I’m a bit partial to the UK Quad standard size, so a search through various online poster collections turned up a nice selection of classic sci-fi posters that got me wondering… when did sci-fi posters become so lame? Sure, the overall poster industry has been suffering, but the sci-fi sector has taken a particular flogging. And that makes zero sense considering if anything should be showing creativity in the poster department, it should be a damned science fiction film.
Moon had several outstanding poster designs, but it’s been the only cool game in town recently. District 9‘s was quite striking, but even it also loses points for being a still from the actual movie. So I decided to look up the current posters for some of the more visible sci-fi films left on the docket for 2010 to see if this trend was on the turn around. The results? Not great. From worst to best:
There are currently 3 variants of the Iron Man 2 poster floating around and all three are boring. I understand that they’re just character teases at this point, but that’s no excuse for lacking style. The Batman Begins and Superman Returns posters were just character announcements as well, but at least they had context and scope. There’s nothing to the IM2 trio even remotely interesting for anyone who isn’t a 13-year old shopping at Spencer’s Gifts.
Granted, that’s pretty much the target demographic for a film like Iron Man 2, but 13-year olds will buy anything they can get their hands on, so why not put in a little effort beyond action figure poses? I’m particularly disappointed by the poster for Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), which just makes me want to type Worst. Villain. Ever. I’d of rather seen a posterized version of the shot in the trailer of Whiplash cutting a race car to pieces with his whips. At least then he wouldn’t look like a homeless man wearing tech-themed bondage and playing with limp jump ropes. How is that supposed to be threatening?
Inception
Man, it’s a real bummer that the most anticipated science fiction film of the year has a poster that looks like it’s trying to ape the man-in-the-street vision of the Joker for The Dark Knight. But even if we didn’t have the marketing materials of Nolan’s last film burned into our collective film geek conscious, I still wager the Inception poster is lacking any substantial draw. I haven’t actually seen it in a theater yet, but there’s little in it that draws you toward a closer inspection.
I do like the tagline (“Your Mind is the scene of the crime.”) and the Inception font, which brings to mind an old school diner’s neon sign, but the actual imagery isn’t even cryptic enough to be interesting. There’s no obstacle, no clear threat. I know Nolan is playing everything close to the chest on this one, and I love that about the film, but DiCaprio should at least look the slightest bit bothered by the fact that he’s standing in the flooded streets of a nondescript metropolis. Instead, he looks as fake and out of place as the water he’s standing in.
Tron Legacy
I actually kind of like this poster, then again I was a few well restrained clicks away from purchasing an original Tron UK quad poster just yesterday, so I may be a little biased. Here the simplicity works, though. Even if you had no idea what a light cycle was or who Tron is, there’s a palpable energy to the poster. The wisps of light behind the center figure’s helmet remind me of the opening credits for Futurama, but that’s okay because A) Futurama is awesome and B) it gives the rider a sense of speed and urgency.
The newly designed Font is appropriately high tech looking but not too over the top. Same goes for the rest of the text, actually, with the icing on the cake being that it doesn’t beat the viewer over the head with the fact that it’s a 3D film. I’m not sure anyone but a Tron fan or film nerd (I suspect these two categories overlap quite a bit) would want to own one, but it’s at least more stylish than either of the posters above.
Repo Men
Now here we’re getting into some interesting marketing material. Sure, the one-sheet you’re likely to see most often at your local multiplex is a simple “slap the two stars and the name up there” job (albeit an above average one thanks to color tone and character design), but there are plenty more floating around that don’t fit that bill. I’m particularly fond of the teaser poster, which shows only silhouettes of Jude Law and Forest Whitaker; and even then they’re dominated by the film’s title and thematically relevant typeface.
Plus, there’s a whole line of posters that don’t even feature the actors at all. These come in the form of x-ray photographs of human body parts revealing the price tag of the artificial organ(s) contained therein. Again, I can’t imagine these meta marketing materials from the film’s fictional organ lending corporation flying off the shelves, but at least they’re unique. Big bonus points for having no less than seven posters that don’t feature the actor’s visible faces.
Cargo
Ah, I should have guessed my favorite of the bunch would be from outside the Hollywood system. You may not have heard of Cargo, a Swiss sci-fi film about the mysterious contents found within a spaceship’s hull, but I think most people would be intrigued to know more going on the poster alone; as opposed to the IM2, and Inception posters, which are easily filed mentally away.
Obviously it’s the most blatantly science fiction of the set, but the appeal extends beyond that. The forced perspective used literally draws you down a path to the massive door at the end of the walk way. All of the straight lines in the picture feed this purpose, gliding your eye to the tiny person who can be glimpsed against the blinding white lite emanating from whatever lays beyond. Best of all, it raises enough questions to get the “What’s going on here?” ball rolling in your brain, which is precisely the effect a sci-fi poster should have.
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