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Monday, November 28, 2011

New John Carter Poster - Early 70's Sci-Fi Book Cover Art?


I'm a bit torn - because visually I kind of  like this poster. I'm really tired of the overly enhanced, generally dirt-splattered, extreme photo-portraits that dominate action and fantasy film posters - so it's nice to see any poster attempt to break away. The composition is really weak, but it does have that bold, graphic, more abstract look of the late 60's early 70's Sci-Fi book covers I grew up with - so it gets nostalgia points. But that's also a big part of  the reason this poster goes so wrong. Burroughs' Mars Series was high Fantasy Pulp - not heavy socially relevant Modern Science Fiction. And although It's pretty clear from images and interviews the filmmakers have taken no visual cues from either publishing era, the poster also does not represent the style of the film as seen in trailers and photos so far - really,  I wish the Martian landscape looked this red in the trailers. So conceptually this poster fails in actually selling the movie it's for...unless they were going for Martian Spaghetti Western... in which case it might not be too far off.

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