This Week In Movie Posters: ‘The Nice Guys,’ And Captain America’s Bargain Bin Sidekicks

This week in movie posters starts with X-Men: Apocalypse, which is your traditional, “pyramid of characters” design. The X-Men franchise, which is arguably the most consistently good of any superhero movie franchise (Batman? Iron Man?), has had notably terrible poster game, so it’s nice to see one that that’s pretty good. Doing the pyramid thing makes sense, on account of the character of Apocalypse is really big. His defining characteristic, really. They also made Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Nightcrawler, who looks like a mutant Stephon from SNL, really small, which seems wise.

I always enjoy that one of humans’ greatest desires is mind control and the desire to control things with our thoughts, but if we depict that on film, the character has to frown and use their palm. Mind control is a lot like touch screens, apparently.

Meanwhile, Quicksilver’s smirky face always looks like he’s just found something droll on Pinterest, and Sansa Stark’s body position looks like a G.I. Joe that fell on the floor. Solid poster, though still room for improvement, I guess you could say.

This is the female equivalent of multiple, overt phallic symbols. There are obviously a lot of pregnancy and motherhood allusions (the title, the hand over the stomach, the tagline) and yet her dress is sort of symbolically menstruating onto the title. And it has Morris Chestnut’s name above the title, a guy who’s basically “Somebody gon’ get pregnant” in human form.

“Achingly real.”

I guess it’s true, reality often does make me sore.

Anyway, I don’t really know what this movie’s about, but the Canadians all seem to like it, so there’s that. And I am intrigued by this shirt that has “Pope John Paul II” above a Jaguars logo. Is that a Canadian skate brand? I haven’t seen a Canadian thing this obtuse and impenetrable since… well, ever. Usually Canadiana is just woodsy Americana without the ego. This is… I don’t know. A coming-of-age tale about some delinquents who really need a haircut, I guess.

There really isn’t much to these Nice Guys posters – some ’70s fonts, some ’70s colors, some ’70s outfits — but damn if they don’t get me pumped as hell. It’s amazing that it’s been 20 years since Pulp Fiction and the “guns + hoodlums + ’70s clothes” thing still hasn’t gotten old. Then again, that could just be the Shane Black effect. No one else can combine things that should be universally played out and corny and make them seem lovable and timeless like Shane Black. He’s like the awesome dad joke of directors.

Hoo boy, that sleeve of the suit altered to fit the cast on his arm is just sublime, isn’t it? Wonderful. Also, Ryan Gosling is one of those guys who convinces other men to grow awful-looking facial hair. He’s so handsome that any stupid facial hair pattern looks great on him, even handlebar/soul patch combo. Ryan Gosling is the male equivalent of that one girl in the world who actually looks good in high-waisted jeans.

This was a clever idea, to create a silhouette out of pull quotes. But a little misleading. My first thought was, “wow, that’s a lot of critical acclaim!”

And then I looked closer and realized the quotes were musicians talking about Miles Davis, not critics talking about the movie. And there are multiple quotes from Jonny Greenwood. Few things make me not want to see something as much as you trying to convince me how brilliant the Radiohead guy thinks it is. This poster has been Pitchfork’d, I say!

Speaking of posters screaming “DON’T WATCH ME,” holy hell, look at this trainwreck of a Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates poster. Nothing says “comedy” like “caa-raaaZy ladies,” and nothing says “caa-raaaZy ladies” like sticking your tongue out and grinding crotches at a formal event, am I right? My God, these girls have truly “gone wild!” Even Zac Efron is upset at just how “wild” these girls have gone. “Gosh dang it, my girls have gone wild and there’s nothing I can do about it,” his face seems to say.

Don’t you just hate it when your girls go wild? I didn’t spend thousands of dollars on video tapes of girls going wild over the past decade just to sit back and watch girls go wild without getting upset about it, that’s for sure.

Does this search bar symbolize me Googling what this movie is about? Because this movie has left me no choice. And yet, nothing about it compels me enough to take that step. I assume we’ll find out eventually, but then, maybe not.

That space above the house is a night sky, a face, and also the cracked floor of a desert. I think once you reach three levels of superimposition that might be too many, no?

This new Kingsman sequel teaser really has everything — sunglasses, diagonal text. Okay mainly just those two things.

“They aren’t just shoes.”

So what are they? Oxygen masks? There’s a kid with cool hair up in space and there’s an astronaut handing him a shoe. So shoes must be like oxygen masks. That’s what I’m taking away from this. You heard it from the Kicks poster, folks, cool shoes are also oxygen masks.

I like to think Ice Age: Collision Course is making a deliberate Johnny Dangerously reference here.

Today’s comedy really doesn’t employ the comical Italian-American accent enough.

I know I’ve said it in previous This Week In Movie Poster posts, but I really hate the character design on this whale shark. He looks like a bath toy.

What language is that, Polish? I’d really like to see an old school Polish poster for Finding Dory.

Does the design on this skeptical octopus make up for the bathtoy whale shark? It is pretty great. Discuss.

This is a nicely straightforward poster for Equal Means Equal, and I feel like I’m pretty clear on what this is about. It also seems to outline the difficulty of feminism, where you’re constantly having to prove something that should already sounds like a proof. “Equal means equal!” Well, yeah. I mean, clearly.

This is a Doctor Strange poster, don’t ask me how I know. Is that pattern something people would recognize from the comics, or just a cool window? I do enjoy the idea that they just wanted to sell the hell out of their sh*t-cool window. “Hey, kid. You like windows? I got somethin’ that’ll really stain your glass.”

What strangeness is Doctor Strange a doctor of? Well, he has a PhD in invisible hands and trippy magic. I’m getting a real “eyeball over the pyramid in the dollar bill” vibe from this. Benedict Cumberbatch feels like a perfect choice.

This might be my favorite poster this week, a hand-drawn depiction of De Palma pulling a creepy peeping tom act on his own movies, along with the perfect tagline: “Being a director is being a watcher.”

And it has Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother co-directing? Count me in.

You have to hand it (excuse the pun) to the designer of this Conjuring 2 poster: Virtually every mainstream horror movie these days is about either a haunted house or some kind of exorcism, and this poster manages to combine both of those thoroughly played out ideas in a way that’s graphically interesting.

Awesome, it’s my favorite Captain America character… uh… Catman! Is that Catman? I don’t read comics enough to know who that is, but if he’s not named “Catman” it’s a real misnomer.

Oh good, the bow-and-arrow guy is back. Can’t fight a modern war without an expert in bowcraft, I always say. In this age of robot planes that rain destruction from thousands of miles away, it feels good to look back at a simpler time when an archery expert could turn the tide of war.

Ooh, and ol’ metal-arm Steve is back too. (I kid, I know it’s Bucky Whatshisface, please don’t correct me). I liked in Winter Soldier when he showed up for five minutes and then he was all “Okay, gotta go, byeeeee!” I bet he was off polishing up his metal arm. Important stuff.

Oh, and the hang glider guy is also back. Hey, is it just me, or did Captain America get all the bargain bin sidekicks? “Oh cool, I get the bow and arrow guy and Johnny Hang Glider. That’ll work perfectly as long as America only gets attacked by wild boars and a series of cliffs.”

Wait, check that, Captain America not only has bow and arrow guy and Johnny Hang Glider, but they’ll also be joined in their quest for world peace by the Farrah-haired assassin. I feel safer already. Seriously, is that the world’s most inconvenient hairstyle for evil-fighting? Discuss.

BROW THEM, CAPTAIN AMERICA! BROW THEM RAW!

But really though, Chris Evans has really strong features. His bone structure makes me want to be more masculine.

Of all the things about this Cabin Fever remake, still the one that most jumps out at me is the fact that it’s directed by a guy called “Travis Z.”

“Travis Z” would’ve been a great name for Kyle Mooney’s fashion designer character in Zoolander 2, IMHO.

Say what you will about turning Angry Birds into a movie, the character design is pretty spectacular.

This one reminds me of that episode of South Park where the town gets infested by hippies. Get ’em, Angry Birds! Smash up those hippie pigs and break up their drum circle!

Do they even need to put Josh Gad’s name on movie posters anymore? These days I feel like the Josh Gad is implied.

 

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