Not so good movie posters 2

Slumdog Millionaire

I f-ing love this movie and it’s definitely one of my top 10 favorite films of all time.
Unfortunately, the poster looks like it was made by a 14 year old playing around with Photoshop
In my opinion, it just doesn’t look epic or impressive enough for the film
The film itself was an epic masterpiece in cinema history, but the poster looks crappy.
It looks like one of those cheap posters you’d see in the hallways of a high school advertising for stuff like anti-drug campaigns, military service, “talk to your counselor”, or universities.

Spider-man 2

The movie itself was alright, but just look at this photoshop disaster!
Her thumb is small and weird, her hand is in an odd angle if you look at were her arm is going, and Spidey’s hand is way off to. Not to mention the fake looking cuts in his suits.

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

Urban Legend

Floating head posters are my all-time biggest pet peeve. I’m calling out Urban Legend because it’s a good example why floating head posters suck. However, it’s not the only one out there, and it won’t be the last either. There are six heads floating around an eye, divided by broken glass and text from newspaper clippings. Some heads are looking scared in one direction, some are looking directly at the camera, and others are looking dazed and confused. The tagline works well for the movie, but the overall image doesn’t. What do an eye and a broken glass have to do with urban legends? But most importantly, what’s up with all those floating heads? Slasher movies were a big contributor to the floating head phenomena, but it dipped into genres across the board after awhile. Please make it stop

Next

This poster is a combination of what’s wrong with all of the above. There’s the unnecessary city landscape at the bottom of the poster (Righteous Kill), Nicolas Cage’s giant head in contrast to Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel (Changeling), screen captures of Moore and Biel taken directly from the movie (Jingle All the Way), and everyone is staring off to the side with a little too much intensity and concentration (Urban Legend). I’m not gonna say this is the worse poster of all time, but I will say it’s downright awful. Throw in an explosion, Photoshop a mixture of blacks, blues, and whites, and give everyone equal billing — even though it’s obvious that Nic Cage, thanks to his enormous head, is the lead star — and you have yourself one train wreck of a movie poster

Prime

Just try to look at this and not laugh. It’s not even remotely convincing that these 3 actors were in the same region of the world when their photos were taken. Look at the alignment of the billing block. What? Absolutely nothing about this makes any sort of design sense.
Three attractive (though not necessarily recognizable) faces and a poster that’s ugly in every way. The positioning of the names at the top is likely somebody’s awkward solution to a contractual obligation that Uma Thurman receive top billing. Relative size and arrangements of faces and names are often written into all parties’ contracts these days, presenting designers with… nightmares like this. Who could possibly have approved such flagrantly bad work?

Death At A Funeral

James Marsden’s miraculously disappearing neck (and bizarre lack of nipple), and the cardboard cut-outs of Rock, Wilson and Lawrence are the rubbish icing on an unconvincing poster cake.

The Accidental Husband

‘Sometimes Love Happens By Accident’
Yes, and sometimes 4-year olds are asked to use Photoshop.
It’s not the blatant ‘three cut and paste photos in one’-ness that rankles, but the weird, disturbingly detached bouquet-holding hands emerging from left and right.
Colin Firth looks like he’s drunk, having just had an arm transplant, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s appendage looks wooden.

Wanted/Juncture

The majority of artists, writers and performers are inherently lazy.
So why design something new when you can just blatantly rip off someone else? 2007′s Juncture had a pretty cool poster, but as the thriller didn’t really set the world alight, 2008′s big-budget Angelina Jolie-starring blockbuster Wanted ‘borrowed’ off it liberally. Except in attempting to change it, they’ve only made it look weirder, with an ET-esque spindly elongated arm emerging from the bottom. Look at that again – that would mean Jolie has arms that drag along the floor by her feet. Sexy.

Jonah Hex

Using the wonder of Photoshop to erase the odd blemish or shave off the odd inch of cellulite is common practice in Hollywood.
But Megan Fox is already smokin’ hot, so why they’ve decided to delete her rib cage is beyond us.

King Arthur

We get it – sex sells.
But Keira Knightley hasn’t exactly been hit around the face with the ugly tree now, has she?
So while UK audiences are more than happy to see her tomboyish physique, American audiences wouldn’t really get it – so they decided to digitally alter her boobs and shove some poundland henna tattoos onto her face and shoulder for the stateside release.

Venus

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH
Put it away. Why won’t it stop looking at me? WHAT IS THAT?!
Peter O’Toole perfecting the ‘I’ve just pooped myself’ look with disturbing aplomb.

The Whole Ten Yards

Bruce Willis’ facelift, skirt and bunny slippers, Matthew Perry’s completely inhuman visage, the creepy elderly Gollum in-between the two.
The photoshopping is of such a poor standard, the whole poster looks like it’s been created by school children.

Blonde and Blonder

Everything. Seriously, everything. The grass, the shadows (seriously, the shadows), the keep off the grass sign, the appallingly crap tyre tracks, the golf buggy rotated 90 degrees (and boiling a kettle while it’s at it), the stuck-on heads, Denise’s deranged face, Pamela’s left knee, the screeching tyre on the golf bag, the unexplained geyser in the middle-distance…

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