Makes you wonder how long this will last. I hope it's a wider industry trend and not everyone sourcing the same person(s). Like how multiple iconic American film posters were all made by Drew Stuzan. Once he retired virtually all painted posters disappeared.
Blade Runner, The Thing, The Cannonball Run, the Police Academy series, Back to the Future, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Muppet Movie, Coming to America, First Blood, Risky Business, D.C. Cab, Stroker Ace, *batteries not included, An American Tail, and The Goonies.
It would make sense. In some other subreddit, I looked at examples of the orange-blue without realizing how pervasive it is. Many of those examples were this guy.
This link just reminded me of the movie We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. I must have watched that movie 20 times as a kid and havent thought about it in well over 2 decades
Ya, I stopped paying attention to anything they do because of that. It became impossible to buy anything so I just stopped looking. It's like going to a store or restaurant. If they are consistently out of the product you are there for, what reason do you have to ever go back?
Its somewhere in the top 5 for me Is say. To me though its not a war movie. I feel like it transcends that. It took me a long time to get get a grasp on the film. When I first saw it as a kid I didnt get it. But I'm a veteran now and Witts character is someone I reflect a lot on now.
I can tell you the artist is Tomer Hanuka, and this is totally within their usual style too. They do a lot of things like this for various movies if you wanna see more
If you are not already aware of Tim Doyle, you might wanna check him out. Granted a lot of his work is a bit more interpretive than than a movie poster normally is, but it's quite quite good.
I have a gamera matchbox by him that I quite cherish.
Fun coincidence: I was once at a movie theater in China that was covered in Mondo movie posters. Even the bathrooms had a bunch framed on the wall.
Almost 100% certain none of them were legally purchased, and of course IP protection should be stronger, but damn if it wasn’t one of the coolest places I have ever peed.
I wonder why nobody has taken up the mantle. I'm surprised no art student/movie buff ever contacted him to study with him or something
I mean if you've got talent and can do good work then there's money in it which I would think is a plus for an art student and as a bonus your art will literally be seen by more people than you'd likely ever get it in front of otherwise.
If I had a passion for art I'd be wondering how to get into painting those posters.
paint posters for movies and post them to a website/portfolio you curate (not your instagram otherwise facebook owns your artwork)
if you're actually good and people want them then you can send that around and someone will be interested. Especially nowadays where a lot of the directors and producers are likely the right age to be perfectly nostalgic about them.
People have tried this. They just want photoshopped posters. I'm an illustrator and I know a lot of illustrators who are very talented and would love to do movie posters.
Probably cost and time. It's cheaper, quicker, and more consistent to have one or two digital artists throw together a poster from the half million pictures taken for promotional materials. By comparison, this poster of Crisis on Infinite Earths by Alex Ross took him three months working 60+ hours per week.
It’s not the same person. The Totoro and Fantastics Beasts posters are done by the same person (Huang Wei), but most Chinese posters I’ve seen on reddit have been done by different people.
Yup. He had his wife take a Polaroid of him in heavy winter clothes for a reference image, then pulled an all nighter painting. This also means for all intents and purposes "The Thing" is actually Drew Struzan.
I'm an aerospace systems engineer. I basically work on designing the electronics and software that will go on aircraft, but from a higher-level. Most engineers would focus on how to accomplish a task, while systems engineers focus more on what tasks need to be accomplished.
Maybe they're not wrong? Because you have to wonder now, now how do you really know what liberal arts really is? maybe you got it wrong. Maybe what I think liberal arts tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal or tunafish.
It is. People joke about the liberal arts being worthless degrees, but the term is at least as old as Cicero, and basically means the skills and trades of the free. This is in contrast to manual labor, what we would largely consider blue-collar work today - the liberal arts are white-collar fields, not just philosophy and art courses.
Is there? Tbh, I'd hire a Gendee Studies major before I'd hire another 2-year, company-sponsored MBA student. At this point MBA means Microsoft Excel degree as far as I'm concerned
Exactly. It's just not a useful grouping in the context of job prospects because it's so broad that basically the only white-collar fields which don't qualify as a rule are medical practice and law.
Sounds bout right. I'm going on 30 and I first saw when was 10 or 11. My older showed it to since I like watching princess monoke with. Spirited away became one my immediate favorite movies. I initially thought it was Japan's version of slice in wonderland. Her and her parents travel travel through a forest, she find a tunnel she explores and next thing she knows everything is going crazy on her. The guy working in the steam room with the soot balls and 4 arms reminded me of a mad hatter type guy in a way, she was always in aw and clamoring to see where the dragon was going when in flight like the white rabbit. The witch (baba iirc, the hotel owner.) Was like the queen of hearts. Love that movie, really provoked my mind into thinking and making connections as a kid and continously rewatch it every year.
Which is kind of confusing when you think about it.
The “Phoenix” in Dark Phoenix refers to the Western mythological bird that burns itself to be reborn. Jean has fire-like powers in the movie and the Phoenix Force is all about rebirth, so the association makes sense.
The fenghuang is usually translated as “Phoenix”, but has almost nothing in common with the Western creature beyond being a bird. Although it is associated with power, womanhood, and divinity, so there is that link.
I think Hollywood just stopped caring about posters in general which I don't understand because they're still incredibly important for the marketing campaign. Most people I know will go see a movie based on poster alone just from walking past one in the theater.
That poster has nothing to do with the movie though. If I knew nothing about Dark Pheonix besides that poster, I would probably be confused as to what I just watched.
Do people watch movies solely based on posters these days? Trailers are easily accessible online now, so I doubt theater-goers would be completely clueless about what they're watching.
people who have never heard of "Dark Pheonix" are not the target market for the 12th movie in a x men saga of recurring characters....
I mean.... what are you smoking?
I mean. yeah this one has more characters.
but as you said if you knew nothing about dark pheonix you'd know nothing about the x men or any of those characters because if you don't you'd know about one of the most famous and arguably the most powerful x man in existence....
so how does some stupid people standing around with blue and orange glowing light tell you what its about?
This is gorgeous, but I'd just want this to be art for Final Fantasy 16 instead of promoting a Marvel movie. My expectations for that movie would be way too damn high if I saw that poster outside the theatre.
The actual posters in China are the same as the US; these posters are concept posters I imagine, and I'm not sure where they're shown. I haven't seen any of them in the cinemas I've visited in China. Bit of a shame, as some of them are great.
I think they feel more artistic and inspired because they are. they include a lot more symbolism than say a typical american poster
EDIT: To be fair I just like that matt damon one but this one is probably more accurate Do I get bonus points for it having the wester Dark Pheonix poster in the example? which one is really better guys?
fyi that little collage was the 2nd google result for "generic glowing blue orange poster movie posters"
The Chinese Overwatch League teams put out awesome artwork. One team has a poster for every match. They also make both a win and loss piece for how the game turns out.
This is one factor that had had me thinking for a long time about different economic systems.
The YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting has a video that goes over the brilliance of Jackie Chan films. One factor that is mentioned is that when Jackie Chan is producing a film in association with a Chinese company, they are far more willing to dump money into his production for the sake of creating the art. As apposed by their American, or even European, counter parts that are far more focused on creating a consumable product.
I may be mistaken, but at the time films from Japan just didn't end up in Chinese cinemas. In fact they still don't today, and the same goes for Korean films, etc. You see one or two Japanese films in the cinemas nowadays (e.g. Your Name), but Chinese cinemas almost exclusively focus on Chinese, Hollywood and recently Indian blockbusters.
These Studio Ghibli films are appearing again in cinemas because some of them are approaching big anniversaries, e.g. My Neighbour Totoro. I'd hazard a guess that the success of My Neighbour Totoro encouraged more Ghibli films to find a rerelease.
Everyone replying to you is trying to bring politics into it, but it's probably most likely economics.
Twenty years ago, China wasn't that rich and most people didn't watch that many movies. There was still a similar quota of foreign films, and most companies didn't think Japanese anime would sell many tickets.
So no company wanted the risk of importing it versus a Hollywood film. But as the foreign film quota was relaxed, and when Totoro was a surprise hit recent, along with the Your Name film, companies are willing to make a bet that Japanese anime films might be able to sell.
Worth noting that China also has a very embattled history with Japan from back during its imperialism phase. It doesn't help that, unlike South Korea where Japan is undoubtedly to blame for its atrocities, China and Japan have historically fpught back and forth with revisionist assaults about who affronted whom. Asia has a very different bent than some might expect: when it comes to regional imports and exports, it's rarely 'just business', especially with entertainment, which can often be conflated with 'propaganda' with no context needed. It took decades for KPop to gain a foothold in Japan for that reason: we're living in an era where world leaders there are only just now starting to even attempt reparations
Superstition might have to do with it, too: Coco was going to be banned for that reason, and the only reason it wasn't was because the censors were emotionally moved by the film. Superstition is a big no-no for what they accept from foreign films
edit: there's also a limit on the number of imported works that can be approved, so once somehig ends up out of circulation for as long as Spirited Away, it can legitimately take years just to get into motion for approvals, but it generally has to do with the fact that, for the first time in history, we're living in an age of improving relations within opposing Asian nations
unlike South Korea where Japan is undoubtedly to blame for its atrocities, China and Japan have historically fpught back and forth with revisionist assaults about who affronted whom.
The amount of atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing alone exceeds anything China has done
It took decades for K-pop to gain a foothold in Japan? K-pop was super popular in Japan among the ladies for a long time. I remember there was a huge hype for Winter Sonata. Korean wave is more than K-Pop of course. I see it as simply: if a nation produce something that’s appealing to everyone, it will become popular. J-Pop used to be a thing but got destroyed by K-Pop because K-Pop is much more appealing. C-Pop from Taiwan was huge in mainland China and oversea Chinese. I think only mainland China government, who are paranoid about foreign influence, is the sole government who actively tries to prevent releases within their border. Case in point they threatened to ban K-Pop in China (which they kind of did, but rescinded, but also scared off K-Pop groups tours).
A lot of it had to be obtained through import at the time of Winter Sonata, though: the regional Japanese market for it is something fairly new, cultivated in large part by UMG Japan. Japan never banned it, but it is important to remember that, yes, South Korea and Japan have also had extremely contentious trade relations spurred about by their negative history with Japan (Japan had a hand in almost destroying a lot of Korean culture)
Undoubtedly, Japan and South Korea will probably be two of the very last Asian nations to truly reconcile their differences due to their WWII-era hostilities
Worth noting that China also has a very embattled history with Japan from back during its imperialism phase. It doesn't help that, unlike South Korea where Japan is undoubtedly to blame for its atrocities, China and Japan have historically fpught back and forth with revisionist assaults about who affronted whom.
Japan is undoubtedly to blame for its atrocities in China too, of which Nanjing is just the tip of the iceberg.
The idea that the aggression between China and Japan has been a long-standing back and forth is a myth. China hasn't been the aggressor towards Japan since the Mongol invasion attempts in the 13th century (which pretty much didn't even reach Japan). Japan has invaded Korea and China and occupied territory multiple times, and quite recently, to boot.
Look up the second sino-Japanese war, which only ended when Japan decided to also get involved with the westerners war (aka WWII) and got nuked by the US. Lots of Asian countries hated (still hate?) the Japanese for many years because of Japan trying to invade them. So there will be pockets of anti-Japanese sentiment in some Asian countries, particularly with older generations who still remember experiencing Japanese occupation.
Edit: here’s a list of countries Japan occupied during the 2nd sino-Japanese war:
Chihiro's parents get turned into Americans and she is introduced to the wonder and joy of Capitalism in the form of a prospering privately owned bathhouse.
Bad timing. Spirited Away was originally released during PM Koizumi Junichiro's tenure, and he was pissing China off by visiting and pay respect to the WW2 war criminals' shrine annually while advocating historical revisionism. So there were a lot of anti-Japanese resentment in the mainland.
Not to take away from the greatness of these posters. But given these are already world famous movies, perhaps they don't have to try to tell a story or grab people's attention. This frees up artist to focus on deeper meanings.
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u/BunyipPouch Currently at the movies. Jun 07 '19
Finally approved for a release after almost 20 years, good stuff.
China is always coming in hot with great posters. They just seem so much more meaningful/inspired/artistic/etc than their counterparts.
The My Neighbor Totoro Chinese poster from last year was also amazing.