What the Heck Happened to Modern Movie Posters?

What was the last poster for a recent movie that you were excited to get up on your wall? I’m not talking about the Mondo fan posters or some limited edition poster for a classic film – I’m talking about anything from the last – let’s say 10 years of fan-pleasing blockbusters that looked like more than just a 20-minute rush job in Photoshop.

In their video “WTF Happened to Movie Posters,” Goodbadflicks takes a depressing look at the state of theatrical poster art – usually the place for some of the least inspired, visually-repetitive noise for what’s ostensibly a visual medium.

Let me repeat: the film industry no longer seems to know how to tell us what’s visually compelling about their films.

The video is essentially a grim catalog of the many ways the marketing people in the film industry are failing to sell the creative aspect of their films, relying on star power (in an age where we’re being told time and again that the movie star is dead). It even touches on one of my personal favorites, the floating head.

I’ll leave you with this quote which sums up the clash between the creative and the commercial which gives us these uninspired works of quickie marketing in a crowded market:

“The problem is that the studios dump so much money into the production and trailers… [that] by the time the studio allocates the money for the poster that’s attached to the film, they give the artist the least amount of time and the least amount of money to churn out anything worthwhile.”

Read our series on horror movie posters here.

[Source: GoodBadFlicks via Blastr]