Marvel Studios has released a new, possibly final, poster for Ant-Man, and... Well...
We expect more from you, Marvel.
At cursory glance, there's nothing really wrong with the poster. It communicates that this is a Marvel superhero flick about a guy calling himself Ant-Man and wearing a high-tech suit. We can tell that it's set in San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, and we can see the three main stars given prominent placement.
But everything from the poses to the composition absolutely screams "predictable." Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Photoshop could have put this thing together. It's comprised of several already-released publicity shots of the actors, and they've just been slapped together with Ant-Man himself standing in front and, of course, there is a soft white outer glow around Ant-Man.
Where's Drew Struzan when you need him?
I mean, that's just a matter of copying your Ant-Man image, pasting it into the poster image, and setting the Ant-Man layer's blend style. We're talking four, maybe five clicks of your mouse, tops. Takes all of about five seconds.
And then there's the fact that the whole thing looks exactly like every other superhero movie poster ever.
That's bad enough, but this is Ant-Man, and it's supposed to lean more heavily on cheeky humor than its Marvel brethren. There's nothing about this poster to convey that kind of witty tone.
Why you wanna make us sad, Marvel?
There are so many better things that could have been done with this poster. Like maybe a frozen-in-time closeup on Paul Rudd's face at the exact moment a bug lands on his cheek and he freaks out. Is a little imagination too much to hope for?
You've had a dozen mega-hit movies, you could totally buy all of your rivals if you wanted to, and yet for your next big movie's promotional poster you settle for something an intern can put together on their lunch break?
Maybe it will look better in person. Somehow.
Or hold up, here's a thought. What if it's intentionally bad? What if Marvel is trying to lower expectations for Ant-Man by releasing a cheesy/retro poster so that we'll be pleasantly surprised when we see the movie?
Hmm.
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