We’ve got a lot to get through this week in This Week in Posters, including some fine example of true Vin Dieselry. But in the interest of starting strong, there’s a whole batch of posters for the new Point Break remake that are just incredible.
This first one, with the snowboard and the rifle — I realize James Bond has already combined guns and skis (to say nothing of the Finnish army), but the fact that it looks like this guy’s about to push himself off a 100-foot drop down into a rocky chute and into a cornice, all while holding a military-style assault rifle, feels like a new high-water mark in xxxtreme filmmaking. Have we ever seen an FBI agent pick off a team of commandos one by one, all whilst shredding the gnar? I like to imagine he’s going to do one of those rodeo flips and shoot guys in 360 degrees while both upright and inverted. I cannot wait.
Alt title: POINT BREAK: SOOO PITTED.
The FBI doesn’t train agents to do this? Makes sense. I’m pretty sure motocross school doesn’t train people to do that either. In fact, I’m not sure why anyone would need to learn to try to jump a dirtbike onto a plateau atop an isolated column of rock, thousands of feet above the ground. The only application I can even see to this maneuver is that it might add another level of gnarliness to your BASE jump, but even then it seems like a low reward for the risk it involves.
Alternate tagline: “The FBI doesn’t train agents to do this. Also, this guy died. Be careful, kids.”
You have to be impressed at how many action movies have managed to incorporate flying squirrel suits into their plots. It seems like they would have pretty limited applications in real life. I give Michael Bay a lot of credit for that line in whatever Transformers movie, where Josh Duhamel is debriefing his crew and says “We’re going to wingsuit in…” as if it’s the most casual thing in the world. “Listen up, gang. We’re going to jump out of a plane wearing flying squirrel suits and ride the currents of the wind while falling at terminal velocity. After that, pizza.”
Does anyone else automatically start thinking of the great No Limit artists of the late ’90s when they read this? I half expect Master P to be in the bottom corner with a pull quote. “Unnnnghhh, na-nah na-nah.” — Master P. (Side note, Master P should definitely be in this.)
Also, this is the last of the Point Break posters. How is it they skipped “The only law that matters is gravity” from the trailers? That really seemed like the money line to me.
“An instant classic!” raved some guy whose name we shrunk until it was a squiggle. Otherwise, a solid poster. Santa vs. Satan seemed a little passé, but if Satan is a giant bearded centaur, I’m right back in.
Heist: We hired three really similar-looking guys. Also, Kate Bosworth plays a train.
This poster is in Spanish, but in any language it says “Hey, remember those characters with whom you’re already familiar from childhood? They’re back!”
Oh good, it looks like they’ve got all my favorite characters from Peter Pan: Flamingo Lady, Johnny Spirit Fingers, Billy Elliot, and Johnny Depp’s cousin.
“Every Legend Has A Beginning.”
Yes, even a legend about a boy who doesn’t age who lives in a land where time has no meaning. If you’ve got royalty-free legends, Hollywood’s got prequels. And as long as Hugh Jackman is carrying double-barreled dueling pistols, I will watch them.
Fun fact: In Mexico, this movie is about bread.
I like this poster, though it doesn’t tell me much about the movie. I guess that’s why I like it. I know that it’s a Kristen Wiig comedy, and it’s got attitude!
FYI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2QDxVuPJ4E
Nasty Baby centers on a Brooklyn couple, Freddy (Sebastián Silva) and his boyfriend Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), who are trying to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly (Kristen Wiig). The film follows the trio as they navigate the idea of creating life while confronted by growing harassment from a menacing local known as “The Bishop” (Reg E. Cathey). As things take a dark turn, their joyous pursuit of parenthood is suddenly clouded.
My, that was much creepier than I was expecting. Okay, so it’s a comedy, but also not entirely a comedy (those are actually my favorite kinds of comedies).
Well, this certainly looks like a movie, doesn’t it? I like that it’s called “momentum” and it has those swoopy silver lines in it to make it look like it’s vrooming by real fast. Also, it sort of looks like Olga Kurylenko was naked in the original photograph and they had to Photoshop a jacket on her for the poster.
That talking on the phone with leather gloves thing is a classic bad-guy move, isn’t it? I wonder, do they have to adapt this scene in the age of the touchscreen? It’d be pretty funny if he called to deliver a deliciously worded ultimatum, then tried to hang up, and the people on the other line just sat there listening to him swearing as he tried to hang up a bunch of times and eventually had to take his gloves off.
Michael Fassbender has two swords. Normally, I would mean that like when Gene Hackman talks about that guy named “two guns” in Unforgiven (wink wink), but in this case I mean literally that Michael Fassbender has two swords, one he’s carrying and one on his back. Not that I’m criticizing. I think selling Shakespeare as a story about a guy who walks around medieval battlefields killing people with multiple swords was the right choice.
This is a great poster. Clear concept, title, and image. Also, if I’m going to see a movie about a pregnant Penelope Cruz, I want to know that it doesn’t skimp on protruding nipples, and it looks like they haven’t.
The other day I saw someone on Twitter saying “Is there a worse way to sell a movie than ‘the lives of four strangers collide in ____’?” Now, here’s a poster that’s about as close as you can get to being exactly that. Plus, Gabriel Byrne with really loose collars. Actual IMDb synopsis:
The fractious family of a father and his two sons confront their different feelings and memories of their deceased wife and mother, a famed war photographer.
Huh. I wasn’t getting that from the poster, other than the “confronting feelings” part. That said, this one was written by Eskil Vogt, who directed Blind, a film I really enjoyed last year.
What I’m getting from this is that Vin Diesel is a monk, and he’s been off somewhere growing a beard and praying, just waiting for the day when he has to shave it off and kill a bunch of witches. Come out of witch-killing retirement for one last score, so to speak.
Aaaand here Vin Diesel is again with the hair all shaved off, ready to hunt some witches. Hide your witches, hide your daughters. You can’t overstate how good a title The Last Witch Hunter is. You call a movie The Last Witch Hunter, people know exactly what they’re getting.
Oddly, that previous poster with the sword and all the candles had me thinking this would be a period piece. But nope. Vin Diesel drives cars and shoots guns in addition to presumably swinging a big sword. Anything that will help him kill witches, really.
Wait, Elijah Wood is also in this? This movie keeps getting better and better.
Michael Cain is in this too?!? My God, this could be the best movie of all time. I also enjoy that the tagline is “All will be tried.” This implies that these witches are all going to hire competent representation and receive a fair trial. That would seem to cut directly against the “hunter” part of the title (“By the power vested in me by Smith and Wesson, I sentence this deer to death by shooting”). But I haven’t seen the movie yet, maybe that’s in there.
I read this book, and it was fantastic. It’s about how in the early 19th century, guys really were sailing around the ocean in tiny boats, hoping to poke a giant, highly-intelligent, very pissed-off mammal with sticks and let it drag them around the freezing water for a while until it got tired enough that they could use their even tinier boats to drag it back to the bigger boat using nothing but oar power. That’s just how it was done, and I can’t wait to see Ron Howard put it on film. This poster does a decent job of communicating the inherent “Nope!” of that job in a single image.
The red makes for a striking visual here, and I like that it sort of looks like a vintage baseball card. I’m a little baffled by the tagline though. “A creature as unquenchable as the sun?” Who, the bird? Also, is the sun “unquenchable?” I guess it is. I mean, I’ve never tried to buy it drinks, but I assume it could handle them. Still, not the first adjective I think of when it comes to the sun. “As shiny as the sun.” “As bright as the sun.” “Also a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace.”
Basically, I think they should’ve consulted noted sun experts They Might Be Giants on this one.
All I really needed to know about Hardcore was “crazy Russian action movie and it’s called Hardcore.”
I’m already sold, because I’ve seen what Russians call normal daily life, and I’m scared and intrigued to find out what they call “hardcore.” This poster basically just doubled down on that concept and it looks great. I wanted to see this without even knowing that Sharlto Copley was in it, and now I’m frothing at the mouth. Seriously, someone come jab me with a needle. The trailer is here, FYI.
Pixar is really putting all their eggs in the “wonder” basket with The Good Dinosaur. Like, this looks like an animated festival indie at this point. It seems like Pixar is close to dispensing with the pretense that these are even intended for kids at this point, if they haven’t already. And that’s fine. As a childless person, I’m happy to see kids’ movies become something parents drag their kids to rather than vice versa.
They’re really hanging a lot of suspense on what that tattoo says. “Mother’s Day?” “Brother’s Keeper?” “Smothers Brothers Forever?” The options are endless.
Divergent is such an unstoppable money-making machine that they don’t even need to put pictures of the cast on the posters anymore. It’s just a logo. That should be the goal of any movie franchise, actually, to get to the point where all you need to sell it is your own logo.