Jed Q. Segovia (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bluelead) wrote,@ 2009-01-25 16:28:00 |
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Snide remarks on Snyder posters
I have this fleeting suspicion that there’s a copy-paste format when it comes to marketing posters of Zack Snyder’s comic book movies.
Take 300. “Old school” swords-and-sandals movies, such as Gladiator and Troy, have traditionally used serif fonts to convey a classical tone, a pseudo-Hellenic feel that gave people the notion that buildings in ancient times were carved by letters using either Bembo or Minion.
When 300 came out in 2007, it pretty much set itself apart from other S&S’s by using bold sans serif fonts, bent at dynamic angles. Taglines were then placed across character’s faces as if screaming the very words.
The effect is jarring and aggressive, which admittedly matches the hypermasculine context of the film by making it look as if the posters themselves were screaming as loud as Gerard Butler’s angry Spartan king (WATCH! THIS! MOVIEEEEE!!!) My one nitpick is that why would the marketing team opt to use properly shaped letterforms when the 300 logo itself is a stylized blood spatter? Then again, if they had used that sort of type for the slogans, they may have ended up looking like posters for a slasher flick – which 300 was anyway, with all the hacking and goring and ugly, disfigured people-butchers in it.
Now we have the Watchmen posters.
Sharp Watchmen fans will immediately recognize the taglines as a quote spoken by each character in their respective poster. No doubt they were chosen by the marketing team (or by Snyder) because they were the simplest quotes in terms of delivering to the audience that character’s profile and psyche. Which echoes the technique they used in 300; they took a central character, and on their poster stitched them with the appropriate tagline.
Then there’s the flying-bold-letters fonts. Sure, in the case of Watchmen, it makes sense that they would use the same font if they wanted the marketing to visually echo the book. The Watchmen comic in itself is a feedback loop of recurring imagery, so marketing must have thought, “Well hey, since the title’s standing to the left in big yellow font, let’s do that too for the posters!” Fair enough.
But what I don’t like is that with the way the letters are rendered, they end up giving off a dynamic kind of feel. It’s like the taglines are speaking in that deep, superheroic tone typical of big-chinned dudes humbly stoic in delivering their catch phrases. And the point of Watchmen is that it’s not dynamic, it’s subtle. Everything about it, from the character’s actions, lines, and the book’s imagery, is a subtle stitching together of the big picture. The very core of the story is beneath the surface of the illustrations, understandable only after multiple reads. It would have suited the posters more if the words were just floating, full frontal towards the reader with no angles, without any embellishments or hooplah. That way, it would look more psychological and less big bang, which is what Watchmen is all about. If Snyder wasn’t out to make just another comic book movie (because Watchmen is not just another comic book), then he shouldn’t have resorted to typical comic book movie marketing styles.
And both the 300 and Watchmen posters look way too similar. The marketing team must have been the same as the ones on 300, if only to explain why it seems their posters were stuck in a style rut. The art direction is not the way to go if Snyder doesn’t want to be ghettoized as the “comic book director” – because his comic book movies, both already bogged with extreme-slow-to-extreme-fast cinematography, are being marketed by posters that reek of redundancy.
If this was intentional on the filmmakers' parts, then they've done a good job of keeping Snyder's shtick stuck on one format. Better that they break out of this rut instead of landing the next Snyder movie into a predictable design format.
I have this fleeting suspicion that there’s a copy-paste format when it comes to marketing posters of Zack Snyder’s comic book movies.
Take 300. “Old school” swords-and-sandals movies, such as Gladiator and Troy, have traditionally used serif fonts to convey a classical tone, a pseudo-Hellenic feel that gave people the notion that buildings in ancient times were carved by letters using either Bembo or Minion.
When 300 came out in 2007, it pretty much set itself apart from other S&S’s by using bold sans serif fonts, bent at dynamic angles. Taglines were then placed across character’s faces as if screaming the very words.
The effect is jarring and aggressive, which admittedly matches the hypermasculine context of the film by making it look as if the posters themselves were screaming as loud as Gerard Butler’s angry Spartan king (WATCH! THIS! MOVIEEEEE!!!) My one nitpick is that why would the marketing team opt to use properly shaped letterforms when the 300 logo itself is a stylized blood spatter? Then again, if they had used that sort of type for the slogans, they may have ended up looking like posters for a slasher flick – which 300 was anyway, with all the hacking and goring and ugly, disfigured people-butchers in it.
Now we have the Watchmen posters.
Sharp Watchmen fans will immediately recognize the taglines as a quote spoken by each character in their respective poster. No doubt they were chosen by the marketing team (or by Snyder) because they were the simplest quotes in terms of delivering to the audience that character’s profile and psyche. Which echoes the technique they used in 300; they took a central character, and on their poster stitched them with the appropriate tagline.
Then there’s the flying-bold-letters fonts. Sure, in the case of Watchmen, it makes sense that they would use the same font if they wanted the marketing to visually echo the book. The Watchmen comic in itself is a feedback loop of recurring imagery, so marketing must have thought, “Well hey, since the title’s standing to the left in big yellow font, let’s do that too for the posters!” Fair enough.
But what I don’t like is that with the way the letters are rendered, they end up giving off a dynamic kind of feel. It’s like the taglines are speaking in that deep, superheroic tone typical of big-chinned dudes humbly stoic in delivering their catch phrases. And the point of Watchmen is that it’s not dynamic, it’s subtle. Everything about it, from the character’s actions, lines, and the book’s imagery, is a subtle stitching together of the big picture. The very core of the story is beneath the surface of the illustrations, understandable only after multiple reads. It would have suited the posters more if the words were just floating, full frontal towards the reader with no angles, without any embellishments or hooplah. That way, it would look more psychological and less big bang, which is what Watchmen is all about. If Snyder wasn’t out to make just another comic book movie (because Watchmen is not just another comic book), then he shouldn’t have resorted to typical comic book movie marketing styles.
And both the 300 and Watchmen posters look way too similar. The marketing team must have been the same as the ones on 300, if only to explain why it seems their posters were stuck in a style rut. The art direction is not the way to go if Snyder doesn’t want to be ghettoized as the “comic book director” – because his comic book movies, both already bogged with extreme-slow-to-extreme-fast cinematography, are being marketed by posters that reek of redundancy.
If this was intentional on the filmmakers' parts, then they've done a good job of keeping Snyder's shtick stuck on one format. Better that they break out of this rut instead of landing the next Snyder movie into a predictable design format.
