Wednesday 8 June 2011

I'm Sure I've Seen The New Super 8 Poster Before

A new poster for JJ Abrams' forthcoming better-be-brilliant-or-else Super 8 hit the nets earlier, causing small tremors in the nethers of geeks everywhere.

The primary reason for this trouser-troubling was that the poster has deliberately been designed to evoke the great work of Drew Struzan, trading off his connection with the 1980s hits that Super 8 seems to be shamelessly emulating, only with one billion percent more lens flare:
There was even mention that perhaps the great Mr Struzan himself had come out of retirement to do this poster, but upon closer inspection it seems fairly clear that he hasn't. The odd composition, not-quite-good-enough drawings and lack of The Struze's signature pretty much give the game away.

There's definitely something familiar about it though, and that something becomes painfully clear if you watch the trailer. Because every single element in this poster appears in the trailer in exactly the same pose, as if somebody's watched it, paused it every few seconds, printed out a bunch of screen grabs, fed them into a Struzomatic 5000 and produced the finished artwork. Here's the poster again, with those screen grabs plonked on top:
I don't know about you but I feel used, cheated and dirty.

4 comments :

  1. and if he also has lost the ability to draw noses accurately

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  2. At first I was like "Wow, it looks like Drew Struzan done it!" But then I was all like "Bit messy, though, innit? Haphazard? Lacking his usual meticulous composition? Hang on, that looks shitty bollocks!"

    So thanks for nailing what the problem was.

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  3. The movie, sadly, is definitely NOT brilliant. But it's not bad; some of it doesn't work at all, but some of it works like a charm.

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  4. Marge Gunderson17 June 2011 at 12:56

    Agree. It's a cut above the cut and paste posters that fill the cinemas these days the comp is very haphazard.

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