Movie Posters Suck.

Movies have always been a huge part of my life. I use them for entertainment, relaxation, education and procrastination. Something that is really starting to irritate me about movies however is the posters. The companies such as Miramax, MGM and 20th Century Fox pump millions into the films, so why are the posters so bland and generic? Take the Marvel franchise for example. Birthed from illustration and art, you would expect that above any other franchise the films they produce would be beautifully crafted, as well as the promotional products. Yet this is what they deliver for what may be the biggest film of the year:

It's almost impressive how generic and cliched they managed to make this poster, and I feel like it's almost insulting to fans of the franchise who actually were fans of the comic books themselves. It shows us characters we've already seen, posing in the same pose they always do, with a dark damaged backdrop which can be found on 99% of action film posters. To illustrate how little effort has been put into the poster, here is the artwork for the first installment in the Avengers film series:

The word 'Avengers' is in a different colour, hardly groundbreaking. Thor and Hawkeye have their weapons raised in the new poster rather than relaxed, the action must be even more extreme! And yet neither poster tells me anything about the story except who it stars. The only new thing about the new film is that there is a new villain (apart from a few new supporting characters), and yet he's the one character that isn't there.

During a year 1 brief where we were tasked with creating an alternative movie poster for a random Bruce Willis film, I came across many obstacles, the main one being realizing who your target audience was so you could cater your design towards them. With these films being so huge, and having an audience which pretty much encapsulates everyone, they have tried to create a poster which does the same. Yet in their mission to create a poster which captivates everyone, they've succeeded only in creating a poster which captivates no-one at all.