Poster Trends of 2012

If there's one thing I know more about than I know about movies, it would be movie marketing. Working at a DVD store and being totally surrounded by a trailer disc and 6000 DVD covers, there's no escaping it. So as people start rolling out their top movies of 2012 and such (how, I do not know), I'll look at the things that sometimes determine whether we want to watch a movie or not: the movie posters. However, how can they determine our preferences when most of them end up looking the same? I break down some of the poster trends we've seen in 2012:

Alternative/foreign posters that were better than the ones they used for the majority of the advertising.

It seems as if the next big thing is to create totally rote, or sometimes very boring posters to advertise the movie, but then someone will create all of these alternate designs which are ten times better. The Dark Knight Rises and Killing Them Softly both had a lot of alternative designs. Killing Them Softly has a whole lot of American-themed, mostly minimalist or overly artistic designs. The Dark Knight Rises used a whole lot of propaganda posters featuring Bane. I like it when the posters reflect the universes in which the movies have created, instead of just advertising the movie itself. The Bourne Legacy's alternative design was actually quite beautiful, compared to Jeremy Renner holding a gun - how many times have we seen that before? Prometheus had an awesome IMAX poster (which actually didn't spoil the film unlike one of the other designs) and Brave got a very Studio Ghibli looking Japanese poster. It is a pity that they don't use these designs over the more 'safe' choices.

Let us cram everything onto the poster.

This is an old cliche, but people are still using it. Basically, instead of creating a poster that uses less to convey more, they just cram everything onto one sheet. Sometimes I don't mind this. The Savages one is one that I particularly like, since it is so filled with colour, even though it leaves little to be desired from the film itself. The thing I have a problem with here is when these posters are as staged as anything. Just look at that poster of Think Like a Man. It is so staged it hurts.

Lining up all of the cast.

I guess these are good if you have large casts, but sometimes they come off as a little bit cheap. I say just keep with the original poster art and leave the cast to be headlined by the names only. 

Character posters.

These aren't exactly new things but I've found they probably make up a good 50% of the posters made this year. Usually they're just the blockbusters who utilise them, but now they've filtered through to a whole lot of the other genres. And apparently they like to be blue, too. 

Argo and Les Miserables - two of the biggest awards contenders - both used character posters. The Argo ones, all lined up next to each other, actually create a little story. That's cute.

I guess character posters were kind of made for movies like this one. 

Great balls of fire.

"All that glitters is not gold" - some people didn't pay attention to that one, did they? There have been quite a few posters this year that have used fire to excess. Especially that Lockout one. I've never seen so much gold and fire in my life.

Instagrammin'. 

There's been a number of movie posters that have joined the hipster-ish Instagram craze by using old-style filters and interesting lighting techniques. I love seeing that kind of stuff, but sometimes it is a little boring. Especially when it has been used so much, like it has this year.

Going back in the day.

Most of these are alternative designs, but I love these old style posters. In fact, for some reason, The Paperboy's poster is my favourite of the year. It is just so simple, yet so sexy. I love it.

We only need one person to advertise the whole movie.

I guess this is better than having the big cast line-up. Why waste your time on lots of artwork when you can just put one person up there and leave it at that? Unless we're talking about The Devil Inside. That poster is so terrible I can't even think about it. I suppose this one works better if the star is really famous, too. Which is why they do these posters. Lincoln is going to win thousands of awards based on that one poster.

People in people/people out of people.

Why just have one person where you can put people in strange positions on the posters? You can put them inside each other (although I really don't get that Gone poster...Amanda Seyfried inside Amanda Seyfried? Hmmmm.), or you can put them under each other. I actually think that Looper one is rather effective.

Let's do things sideways.

I think this is quite a cool effect - if a little hipster-ish. Instead of have a portrait poster displaying a portrait picture, here we have portrait posters displaying a landscape picture. Rather clever. It sure does make you look at things differently, LOL.

Taglines that are bigger than the titles.

This one hit me a while ago while I was on some website at school and a poster of Premium Rush came up. My friend thought that the movie was actually called 'Ride Like Hell', because it is so big on the poster. I get why people choose to do that, because they want the epic tagline to be epic, but it seems a little silly. Especially when we have the tagline saying 'No one is safe', and then find the movie is called Safe House. That's a bit of cinematic paradox, hahaha. 

What do you think of these poster trends? Are you fan of any of them?