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Graphic Design

50 Movie Poster Remakes (M-R)

It is a good day to come to the races ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to witness something beautiful. Something elegant! These ponies are going to fly through their air for your amusement! We have the unforgettable Oceans 11 looking far stronger and faster than its older brother, Eddie Murphy ruining yet another piece of creative output, several horses of horror that’ll knock your socks off and a 44 year old backed by Alfred Hitchcock that’ll knock the pizazz off it’s competitor.

The remake of The Manchurian Candidate sports a better poster than its original. A good sense of hierarchy, you don’t get the feeling the names of the actors is more important than the title of the movie. Even though in the original this may have been the case. The typography is strong and the layout is nicely balanced. All except the tag line that Mr. Washington is crying.

Mighty Joe Young (1949 & 1998)

Survival is an instinct. Red is a colour. Water is wet. Thank-you for the advice. This one line pushes me to prefer the original, even though we’re being spoken to for no apparent reason. I’m really starting to dislike taglines. Bitterness aside, the newer version isn’t awful design-wise at all. The type is nice and simple and they didn’t just use a roughed up font which most do, so no repeating textures in multiple letters. All the darkness with splashes of bright lights works well, and light through dust/smoke/clouds is always interesting to look at.

The Mummy (1932 & 1999)

The Mummy cops an eye-full in the original. Clearly, over 60 years later, there aren’t as many women for the Mummy to be looking at, so he’s having a good ol’ yawn.

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50 Movie Poster Remakes (H-L)

In part two of this four part series of analyzing the differences between movie posters—originals vs remakes—we have some great comparisons. This meal’s main ingredient is a fleshy base of horror/thriller, with a twist of romance, a dash of comedy and a sprinkle of absurdity. It will serve 13 couples.

This is a great batch because it showcases how far posters have come in the horror genre. From horrible beginnings of tacky facial expressions, it’s now possible to say that posters showcasing death, blood and gore are in fact beautiful. Delicate textures and soft browns & yellows with dashes of red, it’s easy to see that the designers behind these posters love what they do. Crafted with care, there is just something stunning about these pieces of macabre. And horror isn’t alone in growth. With the couple of examples below, you’ll notice that the posters for action films has improved greatly also even though their begging weren’t spawned from such beginnings of that of horror.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977 & 2006)

GLADIATORS, ARE YOU READY?! As almost always, the new adaption of this horror flick is far superior to it’s predecessor. Although, the type has me a little perplexed as it feels as if the H/i hasn’t been kerned properly. The girl in the shot looks more bored than scared, but the textures in the background, the dirty hand in a glove and the required text in the bottom left is so nicely done I hardly even noticed her vacancy.

The Hitcher (1986 & 2007)

I love the simplicity of the 1986 version of The Hitcher’s poster, and the logo makes me smirk in it’s originality when compared to the 2007 version. But everything else is almost laughable about this original. It does feel right for the time, but hasn’t aged well. Not to mention the colours, texture and shot of the car in the 2007 version make me swoon. Somehow the designer was able to make the required squished-to-hell text work in a way that makes it obvious the poster was designed with it in mind, not at the last moment when it had to be shoved in somewhere.

House On Haunted Hill (1959 & 1999)

The poster for the 1959 version of House On Haunted Hill wins the ‘Badass of this post’ award. A skeleton hanging a women, some guy with unexplainable hair carrying around a head, and fantastic type makes up the winner. The 1999 version feels like it was designed with a marketing rep sitting behind the designer. Not that the four (I count four, not counting the credits text) fonts aren’t enough, but the paragraph of text at the top is a little too much. Which is a shame, because if the text at the top and faces in the hand weren’t there, this would be a fantastically intriguing poster.

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50 Movie Poster Remakes (A-G)

Let’s get ready to ruuummmbllleee!! In the red trunks we have the movie posters of the originals, coming equipped with some highs and lows in their career, and at certain angles, unflatteringly showing their age. In the blue trunks we have the younger, the newer, the remakes! They can sometimes be all flash-bang with their photoshopped, oversized faces, but are fully capable of delivering a masterful punch. Ahem… now that’s out of the way, let’s have a look at 50 movie posters and how they’ve been designed for movies that have been remade … round one!

Remaking a movie, or anything really, is an odd thing to do. Essentially those involved are saying either “it was done wrong the first time, we can do it better” or “it worked before, so let’s repackage this and make some money”. So what about the designers behind the marketing material? They can either reinterpret the poster in the same way the director might reinterpret the movie, or they could go right off centre and doing something altogether different. In this four part series, I pit the originals against the remakes for 50 movies; totalling in 100 posters.

One thing to note: in all but one or two cases, these are the posters that Wikipedia provides as the theatrical versions. With pretty much any movie there are many, many posters, depending on the country they were released in, budget, the cast involved and a million other things. So for these posts, I’m only talking about the two posters shown.

Alfie (1966 & 2004)

Let’s start with getting one thing straight – Michael Caine is awesome. This poster however, is not. The huge amount of quotes thrown all over the poster where ever they can fit just makes Mr. Caine’s floating head suffocate.. which would explain why this modern day Casanova looks so unhappy, which brings up the question of if this can really be considered the original theatrical poster?. The newer version of the poster shows some lovely constraints, hasn’t got the stars face half the size of the poster and uses a lovely ligature! A ligature people! You don’t see that everyday in movies posters. The strip that captures Jude Law is a little thick for the font used (but only barely) and the “what’s it all about?” with it’s sinking question mark reeks of the marketing department. Overall, 2004 Alfie is the clear winner, especially as the stray head of the 2004 version is a great nod to the original (be it coincidence or not).

The Amityville Horror (1979 & 2005)

While putting this list together I realised that a lot of the posters for the horror movie remakes are far superior to the originals. That being said, I’m not sure this one falls into that category. I’m a big fan of massive, strong typography and the “For God’s sake, get out!” quote makes me smirk every time. That being said, I do love the logotype for the 2005 version, and it does direct the eye better, especially with the far more interesting imagery. But the 1979 version is so killer (hah, get it?) because of that quote.

Bad News Bears (1976 / 2005)

The thing that I can appreciate the most about the 2005 version of the Bad News Bears poster is the fact that the designers behind it decided to directly recreate the original with the new cast in tow. While the illustrations of the original are slightly better because of the strong shading, the layout is not. The 2005 version doesn’t hide the title of the movie, which is now filled with colour and a lovely and ever-so-slight gradient and, best of all, the star’s name doesn’t come first.

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Process, Not Product

The finished product is the manifestation of all the thought, development and care you put into a project. It is not, however, what you should jump to instantly. It shouldn’t be your immediate goal. It is the process you go through—the thought, development and care—that you should concern yourself with the most.

The difference between an amateur and a professional designer is thought. An amateur is someone whom the client’s words are gospel. They will produce what a client asks for in the brief, using layout, font, colour and imagery suggestions without hesitation, giving them exactly what they were asked of. A professional will give a client what they need. They will view the brief as what a client understands their needs as being and will see the suggestions given as a starting point to get an idea of what said client is after in feeling and thought. An amateur will leave a meeting and begin to act. A professional will leave a meeting and begin to think.

Always ask questions

‘Always ask questions’ is something I found my self scrawling in my notebooks while studying. I wanted to remind my self that there are no stupid questions and that sometimes acting the fool, never taking anything for granted, can strongly work in your favor. And there are so many questions to be asked; of your client, of fellow designers, of the audience and, most importantly, of yourself. Why am I using this photo? Why these colours, these fonts, this layout, this paper, this look? Should it be simple, complex or more elegant or this or that? Should it be bigger, smaller, should I use a photo or an illustration? Or purely type? Is this the best I can possibly do? The best that can be done for this problem? Does the client even need to say this and show that? These types of questions are the crux of the design process. Through asking questions, you push your ideas through evolutionary steps—you push them to the next plateau of your creativity—helping you get a better understanding of what will work, what is obvious and most importantly, what the core goals you should be aiming for actually are.

You’ll find yourself considering outcomes you wouldn’t have
unless you sat down and let your curiosity blossom

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The Beauty of Minimalism

Most poorly designed pieces have something in common; they’re too complicated and too busy. Too many fonts, too many photos, too many logos, too many colours. Just too much. Have a look at the majority of the award winning work that’s floating around—there are few fonts, few photos, few logo, few colours. Even the busy looking designs can be broken down into simple elements.

Design is about being able to convey a message, which is more often than not bundled with an emotion, in an effort to evoke a reaction in an audience. One of the truest maxims I’ve ever known is; if the message is interesting, if it has power and strength, then wrap it in a simple design—let the message do the heavy lifting, not your design. Let the audience discover the emotion or thoughts or connections themselves, let them fill in the gaps, rather than forcing something onto them.

Before we get too far into this, I’ll offer you a brief explanation as to how I came to the genesis of this article. While working on a piece about realism in illustration, I found something much more interesting. Recently, the team behind Family Guy put together a 40 minute retelling of the first Star Wars epic – A New Hope. While comparing the shots of the original film with their illustrated counterparts I realised there was a different kind of article burried in the 240+ stills from the movies I had put together – Blue Harvest, the Family Guy homage, was a well designed take on the original that with or without intention, demonstrated minimalism in an awfully fun way.

Why simple is good

More often than not, the reaction we are trying to provide, be it an emotion, thought or action, is complex and powerful. To make someone laugh, you wouldn’t have a routine that rivals Who’s on First? in length in your layout, would you? Instead, you’d use a single image, with a single tag line, that when combined will generate the reaction you are after – a smirk, giggle or hopefully, a fit of hysterical laughter. The audience will see the image and the line of text and relate it to an idea or experience they hold locked away in their memory, waiting to rise to the surface when triggered. The less there is on the page, the fewer of these memories there are trying to be remembered. A simple combination can deliver powerful results. A simple combination, a simple solution, means there is less to absorb and understand, that is, the easier it is to ‘get it’ now and the easier it is to remember down the track.

Recreating a mood

Take a look at the following shots. The opening to A New Hope is something that everyone vividly remembers experiencing for the first time. An enormous, technological marvel passes over the audience, belittling a moon and surface of a planet as it menacingly chases it’s victim. This mammoth ship is light-years ahead of anything that we can fathom—it’s awe inspiring. It is this that the illustrators of Blue Harvest wanted to recapture. This feeling of awe and of shock. When it was first seen back in the day, it’s complexity was phenomenal, it was like nothing seen before. However as time has gone on, it has became less phenomenal in the world of Science Fiction. So the artists of Blue Harvest had to do what they could, to recreate that initial feeling of awe. So they added detail, more detail than the original. More lights, more compartments, more gidgets, more gadgets. Each one simple in its self, adding up to a more complicated whole.




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