This Week In Posters: ‘Early Man’ Does Character Posters Right

This week in This Week In Posters, we begin with The Commuter, another in a long line of beautiful posters in which Liam Neeson holds a gun. Oh, did you think he was merely commuting? Ha, please. That’s just his cover since he got kicked out of the special forces karate squad for punching out his commanding officer (who was racist). Anyway, I don’t think I can do another one of these movies, but I’ll say this for the poster: if you want a strong diagonal line, this is a much better solution than just tilting the entire horizon sideways for no reason.

[All posters via IMPA]

Cool shading, but… no gun? How are people going to know? I do like the subtle phallic effect of the subway map running through his crotch.

*Watching The Commuter in theater. Nudges date*

“The train is his dick.”

The real star of this poster is Futura font. Get it? The people are little. Whatever, it’s pretty straightforward.

Whoa, isn’t Black Panther the good guy in Black Panther? This mask looks like he’s on trial for eating women. Which I suppose would be something a panther would do.

This is a series of character posters for Early Man. Only they aren’t really character posters, more advertising imagery for imagined stone age #brands. These are pretty great.

Man, claymation still looks so much cooler than CG. I’ll never get tired of those googly eyes and pebble teeth.

Furfection, get it? Whatever, sure. It’s the casual overbite that makes it.

Hey wait a second, it’s the Bronze Age already?

I’m not sure we needed two “fur-fection” ads. It’s kind of the weakest of the bunch.

“Fossil Watch,” on the other hand, that’s just good stuff.

Yep, the iStone. Look, I know The Flintstones were doing these jokes 50 years ago, but they’re still working for me.

This looks like a Nicholas Sparks movie, using the formula of lens flare + light touching + famous person’s younger relative. And yet there’s no Spanish moss or dogwoods or obvious signifiers of the coastal South. Yep, definitely a knockoff. I bet if you turn this poster over you’ll realize it actually says “Nicholas Sporks,” or “Made in Taiwan” in small letters.

You know that slow-motion sequence of white people ironically strutting to vintage hip-hop that’s in every bad comedy? This looks like someone asked “What if we just made the entire movie out of that scene?”

I feel like the “Life in 12 Bars” thing would’ve really popped if this poster had been Eric Clapton sitting in one of the bars, havin’ a brewski. Also is he made out of LEGOs? I don’t fully understand the aesthetic they were going for.

Dear God, that is one of the worst attempts at an eyeline match I’ve ever seen. Now they both have that uncanny valley look to them, like they’re not in love so much as waiting for a system update. Also “Chinese Widow” sounds like a weed strain.

Emile Hirsch is all like “Shhh, quiet down, everyone, I think I hear some planes.”

Was it Dadaism that invented that thing where you drop stuff on the canvas and however it lands that’s the art? That’s what it looks like happened here. See, this is why maybe you don’t just put flags on everything for no real reason. From this I’m getting that there’s a flag, and some people in the Obama administration (?) are very concerned, and “the clock is ticking.”

Zero clue what this is supposed to be about. And we apparently only have a limited time to find out! Great job, everyone, really stupendous.

How is this a poster for Jumanji? This looks like Nick Jonas cosplaying as Shia Labeouf in Transformers.

I think it’s a jaguar. This is another poster for Jumanji, by the way. I like this one. I’m much more swayed by the jaguar than Nick Jonas.

Well sure, I always bring along my sexiest bare midriff to tromp through the jungle. Also, couldn’t you have just put the names in the correct order? Ugh.

Old Don McKellar up there (how did I know that was Don McKellar? I used… process of elimination…) looks like he’s in disguise to keep people from discovering that he’s not Asian.

Wait, Paddington is in jail?! What was his crime, being a bear?

And here’s the flip side of that first poster for The Commuter, where you just tilt the entire thing sideways. Hey, whatever it takes to make typing seem exciting, I guess. The most exciting part of this poster is Meryl Streep’s shirt.

A blurry wrestler… an eye chart… “He may not see, but he believes…” Hey, I get it! It’s about a blind wrestler! I like it when the poster makes me feel smart.

One of these days I’m going to look up who Zendaya is. Why doesn’t Meechee have a nose? I hope this comes up.

Hmm, no nose for Common either. Decent character design though. Is this about… abominable snowmen?

DAMMIT SOMEONE GIVE THESE THINGS A DAMNED NOSE IT’S CREEPIN’ ME OUT!

“Dorgle” is a great name. “Yes, hello, these are my two beautiful sons, Dorgle and Horb.”

Okay, this guy has a nose. And long dancers legs. I assume from the hair that he’s supposed to be Canadian.

“Yeti or not, here they come.” Aha! It is about abominable snow men. Or bigfoot or what have you. Does bigfoot not have a nose? Is that canon? Anyway, this is a very strange poster advertising a very random cast.

Hey, it’s Tara Reid! And oh that imagery. Hey, did Donald Kaufman from Adaptation write this?

“I’ve chosen the motif of broken mirrors to show my protagonist’s fragmented self. Bob teaches that an Image System greatly increases the complexity of an aesthetic emotion.”

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