Tag: wonder woman
Darwyn Cooke Wonder Woman New Frontier studies
The best movie & TV posters of 2017
The best posters of 2017 were for the TV series Stranger Things.
Stranger Things
Not too many posters these days are illustrated. There was a time when all posters were, but that time ended with the advent of Photoshop where photos of the actors could be used in lieu of having an artist draw/paint them. But recently that’s changed a bit, especially with the company Mondo creating old-school illustrated posters. And to a certain extent Hollywood’s followed their lead and has produced a number of illustrated posters for big-budget movies. So it’s no surprise an outlet like Netflix would have one of their shows feature an illustrated poster too. What is surprising is how well the illustrated poster for Stranger Things turned out. Illustrator Kyle Lambert created this poster and the attention to detail on it is astounding. This poster manages to be both modern and have a classic 1980s movie poster touch at the same time.
I also like the non-illustrated posters for Stranger Things too. They all work together well as a set and evoke the theme of the series in just a few images.
Thor: Ragnarok
The posters for Thor: Ragnarok shouldn’t work, but they really do. The colors of them are hyper acidic and I get a sugar high just looking at them. I think what makes these posters work is that they still look like the standard Marvel movie posters, but because of the choice to use these colors make them unlike any Marvel movie poster that’s come before. I know I’ve always said I judge the best posters of the year based on whether or not I’d like to have them hanging on the walls of my office. But the posters for Thor: Ragnarok might be the exception to the rule. I adore these posters, but having to stare at them every day on the wall my be too much for my weak psyche to take.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Much like with the posters for Thor: Ragnarok, the posters for Star Wars: The Last Jedi don’t look like any other Star Wars poster I can think of yet still feel like posters for a Star Wars movie. To me the standard Star Wars poster has a bunch of characters on either black or white, and if the movie came out pre–2015 was probably illustrated by Drew Struzan. Except the posters for Star Wars: The Last Jedi look nothing like this. From the teaser poster to character to final, they have characters colored red on a while background. Which makes these posters totally different in the pantheon of Star Wars yet none-the-less still amazing.
Spider-Man: Homecoming
I’ve been in love with the playful designs of the Spider-Man: Homecoming posters since they started dropping earlier this year. These posters look like they’re capturing discrete moments in Peter Parker’s life balancing things as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man like hiding clothes in a backpack or getting ready to leap off a tall building along with being a regular New York teenager. I especially like one of the posters where Spider-Man is framed perfectly in the center of the image but the background is askew. The first time I saw it and noticed that, and realized the angle that Spider-Man’s really at and it literally made me a bit dizzy.
Star Trek: Discovery
I don’t know if it’s the colors, the blocky typography or the design of the USS Discovery on the poster, but I’ve been a big fan of the teaser poster for Star Trek: Discovery every since it debuted last summer.
Wonder Woman
I really wanted to include the teaser poster for Wonder Woman last year, but I like to include posters for movies in my best of review that premier in the same year as the review. So I sat on this poster for a long time. It’s so simple, with just a near-silhouette of Wonder Woman over an orange and blue sky with the words “Power Grace Wisdom Wonder” below. It’s practically the perfect poster for this movie.
Ghost in the Shell
The Ghost in the Shell movie might have been a disappointment at the box office, but this poster is anything but. It features star Scarlett Johansson becoming invisible via a suit utilizing futuristic technology over the garish neon-infested city the movie takes place in.
Legion
The poster for the FX series Legion, which features the mind of the main character of the series exploding into a nebulous pink/blue mass is the perfect summation for the awesome-weirdness that is this show.
Blade Runner: 2049
It’s interesting to see how the designers for the posters to Blade Runner: 2049 handled things since Ghost in the Shell deals with many of the same themes this film does. Here, they chose to focus on the main characters of the movie like Ghost in the Shell, but to present them in such a way that their photos are totally colored either an intense orange or blue with just the actor’s name and movie title below.
The Dark Tower
The minute I realized I was looking at a city upside down with the negative space of the sky actually forming another city outline from below with the characters of the movie standing in the sky as it were made this poster go from “oh well” to “oh WOW!” for me.
Wonder Woman: Strength & Power
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of characters who have appeared in the pages of DC comics over the decades. From Flash to Aquaman and not as well known characters like Wild Dog and Vigilante. But the “big three” heroes of DC that everyone knows by heart, DC’s “trinity,” are Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. And while Batman has gotten seven movies and Superman six Wonder Woman has appeared on the big screen once, and that was in a movie where Batman and Superman fought each other.
What I find most ironic is that by having Superman appear by himself over and over again on film and the same for Batman those characters have started to change in ways that make them almost unrecognizable from their origins. Over the years in the movies Batman has gone from a brooding yet heroic character, to a dark, brooding and menacing figure cloaked in darkness who’s as likely to machine gun his enemies as bring them to justice. And Superman has gone from the earnest, all-American alien who tells kids to eat their vegetables to another dark and brooding character who also kills his enemies. And I can see why this happens. When only Batman appears in Batman movies and Superman in Superman their characters are never able to really interact with anyone but the bad guys. So writers of sequels do the only thing they can and try to bring new ideas and motivations to the characters and do something different then what’s come before.
And a lot of the time “different then what’s come before” means making the character more “realistic,” which in Hollywood parlance when talking about superhero movies almost always means making the character “dark, brooding and willing to kill.” But that also means that we get two characters like Batman and Superman who are supposed to be at the opposite end of spectrums, dark and light, who have basically become the same character type in recent years which makes for some dark and depressing movies.
To which I think the new Wonder Woman movie is so important.
By DC introducing Wonder Woman into the Batman/Superman mix and allowing those three characters to intermingle with each other a bit it might mean that we get a Batman who’s a bit lighter and a Superman who can return to his roots as the guy who’s core value is to do the right thing at all costs. How does this happen? Because in the comics anyway, and in the one time we’ve seen her on the big screen in Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman is a no-nonsense warrior-princess who won’t take any guff from the likes of Batman or Superman and is probably the only person on the planet capable of putting either of them in their places.
Wonder Woman comes from Themyscira, an island populated by warrior women who have cut themselves off from the outside world and is nearly as strong as Superman. And it’s Princess Diana, the strongest of the warriors, who’s chosen to go to the outside world and see what’s out here which seems to be the basic plot of the new movie.
It’s because Wonder Woman is who she is that I think might just breath some new life into the DC universe of movies. On the big screen at least, her character is new and fresh and her backstory is relatively unexplored. So this means that we should get a Wonder Woman a little closer to the source material, someone who’s strong and beautiful and is just as smart if not smarter than the likes of Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent.
Which is what seems to be happening with the character. The one bright shining light of Batman v Superman was the debut of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) who stole the show in the big battle at the end of the movie and if the trailers are any indication for what’s to be expected in the Wonder Woman movie that’s out now is what we’ll be getting in the character’s first feature film.
I’d say enjoy Wonder Woman while you can, if she follows the path of Batman or Superman in a few decades time she’ll be a dark and brooding character herself ready for another character to come along and shake up the status quote.
2017 Summer movie preview
Out first this summer is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 May 2. I wasn’t a fan of the first movie but am in the minority since the launch of these trash-talking, comedic space-faring heroes lead by Star Lord (Chris Pratt) quickly became a surprise mega-hit at the box office a few winters ago. This time, “Chris Pratt of the 1980s” Kurt Russell joins the cast as “Ego,” who in the comics anyway is quite literally a “living planet.” And what’s not to love about that?
May 19 sees the release of Alien: Covenant, the third Ridley Scott Alien film, and a direct sequel to Prometheus (2012). Prometheus got a bad rap by the critics but made more than $400 million at the box office hence Alien Covenant. What’s interesting here is that from the looks of things Scott has taken Alien: Covenant back to something a little more in the vein of Alien with the crew of a ship fighting the insect-like baddies and away from the more esoteric Prometheus, which I happened to like a great deal. Luckily, I also happen to like Alien a great deal too and couldn’t be more excited for this movie if I tried.
DC Entertainment tries to get their movie act together with the release of Wonder Woman on June 2, the fourth release of the modern DC movie universe. Originally appearing in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and stealing the show, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) launches the Amazonian to the big-screen in her own movie set during WWI. My only concern for Wonder Woman is that she fought the monster Doomsday in Batman vs Superman and almost single-handedly took him down in an ultimate bad !#$ way. So whatever she faces in Wonder Woman has got to be as big or that movie might be disappointing.
The creators of The Mummy on June 9 are attempting to create their own franchise and so-called “shared universe” of movies with the Universal Monsters. Starring Tom Cruise not as the mummy but someone trying to stop her from destroying the world, early looks at The Mummy seem to indicate something like Mission Impossible crossed with Suicide Squad. The Mummy is the first movie of this interconnected film universe that will also include the likes of The Invisible Man, Wolf Man, Frankenstein and the Creature from the Black Lagoon in future films if this one’s a hit.
Spider-Man movies have had a really weird path to the big-screen the last few years. There were two Andrew Garfield The Amazing Spider-Man flicks a few years ago that failed to score billions at the office so that version was shelved. More recently Columbia Pictures, who owns the film rights to the character, had a new Spider-Man, this time played by Tom Holland, crossover in the Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War last year while still retaining the rights to make their own Spider-Man stand-alone films. Now comes that first film Spider-Man: Homecoming out July 7 this time with Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) crossing over to this film.
A third Planet of the Apes film War for the Planet of the Apes is out July 14. The Apes film series is one of my favorites with the first chronicling why the apes got their smarts and the second what was happening with them just after the fall of man. This third film seems to be the story about the final apes vs man battle, with the winner taking claim to the planet. If you’ve seen the 1960s/1970s apes movies I’m sure you know how that works out.
Closing out the summer is the first movie based on the The Dark Tower Stephen King book series on July 28. Starring Idris Elba as the heroic gunslinger Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as the evil sorcerer, the The Dark Tower movie series is being billed as a sequel or continuation of the books rather than a big-screen version of them. It’s hard to describe The Dark Tower without giving too much away, but there are alternate dimensions, monsters and magical powers and, best for Hollywood, if this first is successful a series of seven other books that can all be turned into films.