Zombies Ruin Everything

As we’ve seen, not all advertisements are done with maximum effort in the creativity department. And while not all that glitters is gold, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the view.

Below are seven of the year’s best movie posters, along with some of their variations.

Only God Forgives

Now I’ve already done an article on how great this movie is, where I put down pretty much all the posters I could find without being redundant. So if you come here enough, you may already know how much I dig the ad campaign for this movie. Between the colors and simple layout (for the majority of the posters anyway), this is proof that a poster doesn’t have to jam as much into one picture as possible to get your attention.

I also like the nice, simple touch of “Time to meet the devil” in the mouth. Just comes off as creepy and you’ve seen the movie, you can hear the theme playing when you see the poster.

Click the link and scroll to the bottom to see the others.

Texas Chainsaw 3D

Now this should tell you that the posters representing their respective films are not correlated to quality. Texas Chainsaw Massacre sucked hard but it didn’t mean their posters did. While the creepiness of “Time to meet the devil” is hinted at in the above, Massacre is an up front punch in the face. But fans can appreciate the Leatherface’s faces from past films along with the new.

It was a nice touch to include new and old even if the new film delivered in no way. Just one example of the surrounding media being better than the film itself.

Oblivion

Tom Cruise’s Sci-Fi/Action seemed to do well enough financially and critically but it was the posters that got me interested in the first place. It’s always a gamble with crazy man Cruise on the front lines but thankfully director Joseph Kosinski chose to focus on the landscape in which Cruise is the only inhabitant rather than have his face shoved into ours with the awesome post-apocalyptic landscape in the background…although that happened too.

With multiple posters featuring well known architecture in a future Tyler Durden could appreciate, we really get a feel for just how well the title fits.

Oldboy

While the film is one of the biggest flops of the year on a budget of 30 million and only having made back four, it doesn’t mean the posters aren’t great. With a ripoff scandal surrounding the marketing, it seemed like everything was working against this film. Still, the images provided are great and while they don’t tell you much about what’s going on, if you’re anything like me, you were intrigued all the same.

Brolin’s disheveled look with just enough of a glimpse of the knife in his back don’t tell as much as the main posters did, but it lets us know this guy has gone through hell and he doesn’t look like he’s all the way through. Dig it.

There are actually too many to list but much of the posters became a sort of timeline for what was going on in the real world during Brolin’s character’s imprisonment. Aside from the internet, I don’t know where you would place these things, but it was an interesting idea most stories wouldn’t afford you.

At World’s End

Writer/director Edgar Wright’s love of placing his main actors on the forefront of the poster with pretty colors behind doesn’t work from everybody, but they just know how to do it right.

This, and the fact that much of the ads didn’t feature the actors at all but nods to the film you would only know if you’ve seen it (See below). Always cool to feature “inside jokes” to the ones who are already going to be interested and the more questions created, the better for the movie. Also, the names of the pubs match the characters in the movie.

New World

You may or may not have been able to catch this one, as for American audiences it went directly to Netflix; but that doesn’t mean this poster is any less awesome. Reminiscent of the original Oldboy, this poster of New World catches one of the most violent and chaotic moments of the films- one that dealt mostly with backstabbing and corruption- until we see all hell break loose.

If you get a chance, check it out. It’s not just another pretty poster.

You’re Next

Now if we’re all being completely honest with each other, I hated this movie. As I fan of Horror, I guess you could say I “just didn’t get it.” Were they going for a 1970s Slasher film? It seemed so but it was all just a collection of bad acting and Home Alone booby traps.

But while the movie sucked, the poster still did a great job of laying out where the hunters and where the prey are. It’s a nice combination of simple and complex while the outline of the animal mask brings it all together for a cool visual that would have made me believe the movie was going to be better than it was. But you see? No matter how crappy, an awesome poster can bring you in.

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Below are several variations of the above posters that were also used in the marketing, with the exception of Only God Forgives, which can be seen in the link above.

Texas Chainsaw 3D

Oblivion

Oldboy

The World’s End

This entry was posted on 12/30/2013 at 12:14 am and is filed under Top 5 Lists, Whatever with tags 2013, best movie posters, cool posters, only god forgives, texas chainsaw 3d. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.