To be honest. I love this movie. It probably was one of the best films of the year by far. But one of the things that annoyed me the most was that most of the posters for it actually really don't sell it well. It's probably down to trying to sell what the film is.
But really, there is just something so very wrong with the surrealness of the poster, of course it's trying to convey the idea of the dreamscape being nothing like the real world. But actually I think its a miss really. Having the cast all scattered around like that upside down and at odd angles is more than confusing. And the generic cityscape for all of the strange surfaces that they are standing on is again. Well a little confusing to say the least. The thing is that it doesn't use the elements that we are given in the movie. There are so many visual strong points in the film that could have been so easily adapted to a posters. In fact there are a lot of fan made posters that really do drive in a connection with the film. This looks more like it was for a Bourne-esc movie, the disjoined imagery and the sharp whites on other more faded tones feels evocative of all of Matt Damon's flash back scenes during the movie.
Aside from the disjoined imagery its doesn't actually give you something to look at. At first you want to look at the word Inception. But then you see the collective group of people's faces, and you want to look at all of them, but you can't look at them in a can't look at them in some sort of way that lets your eye flow over the page. Arrgggh! POSTER MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
It really misses the point of good poster design. Maybe I pull up a good poster and what it sells, and more importantly how.
But it's not all bad! I found a poster that isn't as bad as the other one. There are a few things I take issue with. The spacing on the word Inception is faaar to wide and the cast list could be moved down. But this does help better capture the idea of the film. The tag line works better at selling the idea, the cast is given to you in typical Oceans 11 style, everyone has their own point on the map, their pose and positioning illustrating their importance within the role of the film. Dicaprio takes point as he literally is the point man, Gorden-Levit has the large BFG on the left, illustrating his stance within the film as a man not to be messed with. Really this holds better elements than the previous film poster. But I could still pick it apart for the same elements as the previous one.
For a film that was so damn good you would have thought it would have had a good poster...makes you think what else suffered from the same effect.
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Aww man Lucas...no Jar-Jar....
