Cavalcade of Awesome

Tuesday is the day studios traditionally release their DVD offerings to stores. So I thought this would be the appropriate time to discuss a problem I have. Why do many studios refuse to use the movie poster on the cover of the DVD? It makes no sense. Many times, they commission another “poster” that includes all the major actors as “floating heads” with the title and some random scene from the movie. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes they even cobble together head shots of the actors, photoshop them on body doubles, and create some insane, nonsensical situation that many times has nothing to do with the movie.  Here’s a funny video mocking the phenomenon of the “floating head” movie poster.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, here are a few of the DVDs that are the worst offenders in the “WTF did they not use the movie poster” awards.

Footloose — Hey, Kevin Bacon.  Stop staring at me, Kevin Bacon.  Stop it.  I’m serious.  I don’t care how blue your eyes are.  If you keep staring at me like that, you’re gonna see me kill you.  I would much rather have the famous poster for this movie on the DVD than have to kill you for eye-ballin’ me, Kevin Bacon.  Also, your cover looks like a Lifetime movie.  Footloose:  The Town that Never Danced:  The Kevin Bacon Story.

Real Genius — This is one FUGLY cover to a great movie.  WTF happened here?!  Are the electrical shocks being administered to the side of Val’s head what’s keeping his hair up like that?  Who approved this?  There is no way Val Kilmer signed off on this.  The original movie poster was BAD ASS. Why not use that? Cause that would make sense, and Hollywood doesn’t play by the rules of the natural world, that’s why.

Weird Science — I love this movie.  But by not using the awesome theatrical poster for the cover of this DVD, Universal Studios may as well have dug up the body of recently deceased John Hughes, kicked the corpse in the groin, pissed on it, walked around the cemetery “Weekend at Bernies-style”, then re-buried the corpse head down/ass out back in the dirt.  I get the idea of using images of Gary and Wyatt with bras on their head, but WTF is up with the picture of Kelly LeBrock?  Is that even a scene from the movie?  Is she ballroom dancing? Conducting a seance?  WHAT?!  And what’s with all the clouds?  I don’t remember any part of this movie taking place in the sky.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — I don’t know if this was inspired by the 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up posters, but I don’t like the plain color background thing.  It just looks unprofessional.  This looks like something some dude threw together in his mom’s basement and emailed it to the studio.  The movie poster is also a photoshop job, but it’s better than this POS.

Leprechaun — The original Leprechaun poster was simple, consisting of mostly the left hand side of this DVD cover. Now, they’ve shoe-horned in Ms. Aniston so it looks like the leprechaun is peeking in on her in the bathroom like a perv or something. And why is she tinted green? Is there a green light in her bathroom? WTF?!

Smoking Aces — I actually thought this cover wasn’t too bad. Stylized images of the characters, clean lines. Not great, but not bad. I think they even used this as the US release poster. Then, I saw this poster they created for the theatrical release. F’n gorgeous. Even this one is better than the DVD.  Why go with the most boring option?

Ocean’s 11 –I hate this cover.  Everyone is photoshopped in, all from different scenes in the movie.  Ocean’s 12 had a slightly better version of this cover. Ocean’s 13 was the best cover in the series mostly because they used the movie poster instead of hastily photoshopping the most marketable actors into one horribly composed shot. This Ocean’s 11 cover could have been so much better if they had used one of the numerously BAD ASS posters released worldwide. See here. Or here. Or even this one that is a better photoshopped image than the lazy, craptacular piece of crapington mccrappiness you see above.  It makes Clooney look like he’s eight feet tall.

The Longest Yard — This could have been so much worse, but, really, it’s just boring. Also, the hands don’t line up right, they just look fake. Like two other guys are gripping the football from off camera.  Like I said, why don’t studios use the movie posters? Then, I saw the original Longest Yard movie poster here and nearly crapped my pants.  WOW.  Burt Reynolds…undressing and showing his sasquatch-like chest.  There’s no indication whatsoever on the original poster that the movie is even about football, or prison (which, actually, is rectified in the DVD cover).  I guess you could do that type of stuff in the ’70s.  Yikes.  Not only that, why was there SO MUCH text on that poster?  Click back over, read it.  It’s actually pretty funny.  But you could never do that now.  People would look at the picture of a half naked, hairy Burt, see all the text, think, “GAY!”, then go see G-Force or Twilight 2.

This entry was posted on August 25, 2009 at 9:03 am and is filed under advertising, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, movie posters, movies, pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.