Slumdog Millionaire
Spider-man 2
Victory
They’re trying to make the three leads for a “V”… but instead, it looks like all three are part of some freakish three-torsoed, Black Power-saluting hydra. Also, the multiple spellings and translations of “VICTORY” in the background just look like typos.
Soul Man
“Soul Man” is a really good high-concept comedy premise, with a white guy using tanning pills to turn himself black so he can get a free ride to Harvard. Of course, he finds out that being black is more than he bargained for.So why did the poster mention none of that and just chose to have mid-level movie star C. Thomas Howell stand there, in full-on honky mode, next to a completely irrelevant tagline? I have absolutely no idea.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Apparently, for the first Indiana Jones movie, they thought it might be a good idea to market Indy as a clean-cut sales rep or Gap shirt folder who happens to hold a whip. I’ve seen some other posters for “Raiders” that use the correct Indiana Jones font and at least show him wearing a hat… possibly after this early poster made people wonder when Han Solo had time to go yuppie.
Righteous Kill
Here’s a movie with two of the biggest names in Hollywood finally starring onscreen together. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are like a match made in heaven; their pairing should have made for an easy sell and an awesome movie. Then they came out with this poster and our hopes and dreams of awesomeness flew out the window. The studio snapped a picture of the duo looking quasi-badass but mostly looking bored, threw in a landscape shot of a city — because that’s important — and topped it off with a transparent image of a badge and a gun. There’s nothing about this poster that makes me want to see this movie, and I wasn’t the only one
Changeling
The “A Clint Eastwood Film” is too small and illegible, and Angelina Jolie’s giant head appears to be sizing up the tiny boy in the corner for a snack, Godzilla-style. Does she want to eat this kid, pop off his head and drink down his bodily fluids? I have no idea. Plus, there’s a lot of white space going on here. Your eyes are naturally drawn to the middle, yet here the middle is blank. Then you veer to the left, and it’s a monster-sized Jolie head. And this was nominated for a few Academy Awards? Yikes
Jingle All the Way
In the ’80s, Arnold Schwarzenegger comedies were actually funny. In the ’90s, they were scary. Jingle All the Way was twice as scary because it was a comedy and a holiday movie wrapped into one. This poster sums up the movie fairly well, but since it’s a bad movie that makes for a bad poster. Nothing worse than taking screen captures from the final film, blurring out all but Sinbad from the crowd, replacing the background with a ton of white, and wrapping the whole thing with Christmas lights. And not even a single tagline to allude to what this movie is about
