Will Tomorrowland overcome terrible posters? Plus new trailer

Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 11:51 AM Central
Last updated Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 11:54 AM Central

by John Couture

We have talked at great length on this site about the importance of trailers, posters and other marketing materials and how the quality of these marketing efforts have taken a nose dive lately. There is an art form in creating memorable movie posters that rival the greatness of Drew Struzan and Saul Bass.

Visually, these two artists couldn't be any more different and yet, they are both considered visionaries that have created some of film's most iconic poster images. Just by saying their names, most people can describe their unique style and name a film or ten for which they created posters.

Sadly, these days studios are more interested in quantity over quality. I haven't done any scientific analysis on this, but it feels like there are at least 10 posters released for the big Summer films and most of them are forgettable at best. At worst, they are a train wreck that will be remembered for all of the wrong reasons.

Case in point, Disney recently released four character posters for next month's Tomorrowland. With the exception of George Clooney, none of the actors in these posters are household names and two of them are so unknown that even my partner in crime Tim had to look them up to figure out who they were.

If having unknown characters and unrecognizable actors featured on the posters weren't odd enough, the posters themselves are bizarre artistic renderings that leave you thinking of The Wizard of Oz. I'm pretty sure that they aren't going for a direct parallel between Oz and Tomorrowland, although there might be some mileage in making that comparison and seeing Clooney as the disenfranchised Wizard.

Of course, it's an interesting parallel as in Oz they are trying to get home while in Tomorrowland they are trying to get to the mythical land. Ugh, enough of that tangent, let's take a look at these atrocious posters.

So, not only do the towers of Tomorrowland look like the towers from the Emerald City, but the fact that Tomorrowland is only seen inside the heads of the characters brings back the end of The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up in bed and questions whether it was all just a dream.

Personally, I think that they are trying to communicate that Tomorrowland springs from the imagination of these characters, but ultimately the effort falls flat. I'll also quickly point out that Britt Robertson, Thomas Robinson and Raffey Cassidy are facing to the right, looking into the future, while George Clooney is looking to the left (past).

Considering that Clooney's Frank Walker is older and a bit hardened to the world of his childhood dreams, he is looking into his past to ignite the passion for his vision of Tomorrowland. But in the end, all of this critique fails to overcome the fact that the posters are just really boring and plain. At the end of the day, these posters do very little in terms of moving the needle.

Thankfully, Disney quickly recovered from this faux pas and released the third trailer for the film and man, it's a doozy.

The one thing that I will say is that this is the third trailer for the film and each one makes me think that I'm going to see a completely different film. This strategy is pretty unique and risky, but it's working for me. Of course, if Brad Bird creates three different films ala Clue that will be randomly dispersed to different theaters, then I will bow down in my best "I'm not worthy" pose of praise.

In case you've forgotten, here are the first two trailers.

So, what do you think? Tomorrowland is due in theaters on May 22.