Tuesday, September 22, 2009

GUYS, WHAT HAPPENED TO MOVIE POSTERS?

When you live in a place like Los Angeles like I do, naturally you're going to see lots of film posters, billboards, ads and so forth while you're out walking or driving around. After all, movies are what this city is known for. As time goes on you get kind of numb to it, but there's one thing that a lot of today's movie posters have in common that never fails to make me grit my teeth. And what is that one thing, you may ask?

MOVIE POSTERS ARE BORING AS HELL.

Take a look at the next few posters (remember, all from different movies), and see if you can spot the things they have in common.


Have you figured it out yet? That's right, by far the trendiest thing to have in your modern movie poster is a plain white background, and a shot of your 1-2 main characters in a pose that is not very exciting.

THIS IS A BORING IDEA.

In fact, this new breed of movie posters is SO unexciting, that it leaves me wondering what entices a theatergoer to even want to see the movie in the first place.

But it could just be me. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a movie that offers you something as absolutely irresistible as this?

How about this? Isn't it just gripping, the way our friends Paul and Jason are just.. y'know... standing there?

These posters are like goofy family portraits.
Oops, we have more than two characters in the movie below. Let's just shrink them down reeeeeally far tiny! There, that's better. Now they have plenty of space to stand around and do nothing in their worldless white void.

I think the American Pie movies are the ones who birthed this idea of the boring movie poster. It's as far back as I can recall this hip trend being around.

Some more edge-of-your-seat advertisement.

This poster below looks like an ad for Walmart or something.

Funny People! Aren't these the funniest-looking people? I mean, look how funny they're being in the poster. How funny! This movie is sure to be a laugh riot.

Now we see Seth Rogen, who has helped pave the way for a bright and interesting-looking future for movie posters. Notice how every poster he is in is a close-up of his face, appearing either confused or bewildered.

Rogen in his next blockbuster, looking incredibly
exciting to watch for the next 90 minutes.


This soon branched out and gave way to a SUB-LEVEL of boring movie posters: The "close-up of a person's face just staring" movie poster.

THRILLING!!!!!

I hope you can catch your breath after all these overwhelmingly zestful posters. Now I'd like to torture you a little by showing you some posters that are the exact opposite. Posters that are interesting to look at and have some kind of artistic quality to them. YUCK! Who wants to look at movie posters that actually make you WANT to see the movie, I mean really!!