Welcome back to This Week In Posters, for your very first installment of 2017. It’s early January, which means awards season is starting to peter out as prestige gives away to vampires and silly haircuts and stuff. But first! We’ve got Alec Baldwin playing a blind man falling in love with Demi Moore. “Unexpected” is right. This poster has that timeless look, the kind of movie you see in a Walgreens bin and wonder when it came out. 2017? 1987? 2004? It’s very mysterious. I bet this had to have been delayed a year or two before release.
(The worst part of this is that it stole a title from a really good Norwegian movie that probably no one will see.)
And here we have yet another poster for Dreamworks’ Boss Baby, which still feels like Dreamworks is trying to bait people into making fun of Dreamworks. Do they have a master plan? Or is “confident hero with smug eyebrows” just their only speed? I can’t tell if they’re self-deprecating or just leaning in.
This poster for The Girl With All The Gifts is intriguing mainly because I have no idea what’s happening. It looks like a team of commandos has been sent to find a lady Hannibal Lecter. I hate going to IMDb in these things, but let’s just see. Synopsis says…
A scientist and a teacher living in a dystopian future embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.
So more like Divergent or something I guess. Where would dystopian futures be without special young girls, am I right?
I keep wondering when this drive to shorten and informalize the names of classic characters is going to end. Rambo becomes John Rambo. Rocky becomes Rocky Balboa becomes Creed. King Kong becomes Kong. Etc. Now the Wolverine franchise has gone from X-Men Origins: Wolverine (there’s the ghost of a never-launched franchise in that name) to The Wolverine to just Logan. I hope this is the last one, there aren’t many places to go from here. Lo-Lo. Wolvie. Claw Guy. His Grizzledness. El Scratcherino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing…
The marketing for Passengers has been fascinating. It looks like they’re trying to sell this nice, space romantic comedy, instead of this dark-ish sci-fi thing where Chris Pratt sentences J-Law to 90s years of solitude so he can bang her.
By the way, it’s strange to me people criticizing the movie because Chris Pratt’s character was such a creeper. First of all, you’re going to judge the guy who was about to spend 90 years alone? Because you’re so perfect, sitting on your laptop with your tough life of chai lattes and easy cheese from a can? (Okay maybe I’m projecting here.) Secondly, waking up a girl because she was hot is exactly what the average dude-bro would do when faced with 90 years alone, sorry if the dude-bro in question happens to look like your boyfriend Chris Pratt in this case. Anyway, I don’t think the movie was “pro” this, but it’s true there were a good hundred different and better ways the story could’ve gone than the way it did, so I guess maybe I sort of get it after all. Anyway, this is all a long way of wondering whether this bait-and-switch marketing contributed to people thinking the actual movie was more an endorsement of Pratt’s character than it actually was.
Also, his big hands in this poster remind me of that one Ludacris video. That video was awesome.
Good God, what’s going on in that background? Plagues? Locusts? Raining frogs? You’d think this movie was about the biblical apocalypse and not a pressure cooker bomb.
RAWNY, SET UP A PERIMATAH. MIKEY, SHUT DOWN THE HAHBAH. NO ONE GETS IN OAH OUT UNTIL I PERSONALLY SAYS WHAT FA.
“World’s greatest manhunt,” you say? JC would like a word.
Mark Wahlberg looks like a ghoul in this one.
TELL YOU ABOUT THE BAWMBING? I SEEN THINGS OUT THEYAH, KID. THINGS YOU PRAWBLY DON’T WANNA KNOW ABOUT, NOW PASS ME THAT CHEESEBURGAH.
I also enjoy “from the acclaimed director of Deepwater Horizon.” You know, that other movie about a real-life disaster that also came out this year. We’re not pumping these out as fast as we can, no sirree! It seems Peter Berg has found his niche. “THIS FALL, FROM VISIONARY DIRECTOR PETER BERG. THE CROSSOVER YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. WAHLBERG VS. SULLY: JUDGMENT PLANE.”
Wahlberg. Sully. Visionary director Peter Berg. This Fall, Never Forget: A Tragedy To Remember.
Oh, well hello there, skull face eyeball lady. Anyone know this skull lady’s name? Surely she has some skin issues, but I’d willing to overlook it. I’m not shallow like that. Clearly, she has a lot of other things going for her. A great personality. A positive attitude. Adventurous drinker. Great hair. Lots of stuff.
“Chronicle meets Iron Man” was apparently an important enough description to warrant above-the-title placement. Meanwhile, wasn’t Chronicle itself just sort of Iron Man meets teenagers? This looks more like Chronicle meets Gambit meets Now You See Me.
“You can change the cards you’re dealt.”
Ohhh, so he’s like the Gambit of actual card playing? I like it when superheroes use their powers to selfishly make money. Chronicle meets 21, perhaps.
Ignore the French title, this one’s actually called Tresspass Against Us. I think there’s some rule that all Irish movies have to be named after a line from Catholic prayer. “Jaysus wouldn’t loike it eff ye dedn’t put his prars in yer filum! Jaysus wouldn’t loike it a tall!”
Anyway, I feel like having a shirtless Michael Fassbender in track pants, with the picture cut off just above the crotch, is practically begging us to think about his (eggplant emoji). I keep looking under my laptop for his penis outline like when my dog sniffs around for movie dogs behind the TV.
Here’s the other poster for this, by the way:
“This Fall, from visionary director Troy Duffy, comes Praying And Shooting And Almost Kissing, the most definitely-not-gay violence movie of the year.”
“Protect the bloodline?” And with stylized blue eyes… Hey, is this that white genocide movie I’ve been hearing about? Looks like it, doesn’t it. 10 bucks says some Pepe frog avatar guy Photoshops Anne Coulter’s face into this. Please don’t @ me.