What Killed The Movie Poster? 

I think the oversaturation plays a big part in the lost form of movie posters. Back then, you had one shot, a single chance to make an impression. Today, you have a dozen chances, and the poster is probably the last thing an audience member will think about when deciding which movie to watch.

I think the floating head poster being more prominent is interesting because the current state of cinema is being run more by franchises rather actors

The artwork of Drew Struzan and the music of John Williams is the definition of iconic cinema. Great video as always.

I think the Parasite Movie Poster still has many elements of the golden era of movie posters

There's one movie poster from Spider-Man: No Way Home I truly think is a work of art. Peter has his back towards the audience looking down defeated as snow falls down on him. All around him are billboards with his face plastered saying Enemy #1. It gives soooo much weight on what the film is about.

As a graphic designer, I really enjoyed this video. It's the small details in the artwork that really brings life to the image. Speaking of posters, you should check out Olly Moss. He's made some incredible movie/video game posters. He made my favorite video game cover art, Resistance 3. You should check it out.

Teaser posters are often my favorite kind. They tend to be more conceptual, abstract and truly artistic. They aren't trying to sell you on everybody involved, a bunch of actor's faces or even the plot of the film. They're all about the concept, the mood, the mystery. It's what they don't tell you that creates hype. It's what little they tell you they creates intrigue. Film key art posters are a work of art. What bothers me the most is that films today will still have great key art posters, but for some reason the most basic one will grace the cover of the DVD/Bluray packaging, making for incredibly dull art direction.

I never realised how the posters have changed drastically. There are very few movie posters nowadays that I would call art.

No Way Home's poster overcomplicated the poster. Spider-Man 1 and 2 from way back in the day had posters that said nothing and everything at the same time. Just the awe at seeing the spiderman against buildings during the golden hour.

I had a unit in my design uni course, where we focused a lot on movie posters. We are taught to analyse past posters and how they got the message communicated to the audience , through colours, imagery and composition etc. Thankfully we dive into such things as alternative posters as well, basically posters that are unconventional from already exiting films. basically fan art but poster form. They can appeal to nostalgia of an old film or the intrigue of something different. Please give a quick search to alternative movie posters, they are quite amazing to look at! So the designers arent just learning the same techniques, but are actually actively learning to diverge from the oversaturated designs. Its the lack of risk people are willing to take in such areas that are limiting and bland.

Here is my take: when I saw Dune, I was amazed by the movie's photography. Scenes meticulously filmed to be beautiful, memorable, and sublime. They encapsulate perfectly certain aspects of the movie because they're part of it. So, maybe the industry could start to use movie frames as its posters, adding the name of the movie and the actors over it.

The internet allows us to keep up with movies, the poster no longer has the weight and prominence it once had. It’s job is now dissolved into other marketing strategies. And given the ride of franchises the purpose of instilling a story through the poster is no longer needed. We all know we are going to see the next installment of a major franchise.

The John Wick 2 poster is absolute fire. Conveys the entire plot of the film perfectly, and even foreshadows the ending with the open contract on his head. The world against John, and John against the world.

That's a little weird to tell that head salad's posters are wrong when all "good old" poster are head salad but drawn by hand. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the other arguments.

The worst part is that there are amazing alternative Imax and Dolby posters that deserve to be remembered but are forgotten.

The most recent movie poster I’ve loved was for Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s visually stunning, but also contains so many easter eggs and in doing so portrays the chaos of the film

I think what really killed me was how The Batman had tones of fantastically beautiful posters leading up to release, and then for the main poster they still went with the floating heads. Literally the worst looking poster in the selection used only because it’s “marketable”.

I feel like The Martian is one of the few good headshot posters, the “Bring him home” across Damon/Watney’s face makes it feel like some motivational poster that would actually be in that world

I think I read somewhere that during the early years of the MCU they did make a few variations of the movie posters, some were very stylised and hand drawn, using silhouettes and experimental compositions as well as the posters that they usually use. They claimed that they showed these poster variants to focus groups and that a lot of them said they preferred the head salad posters because they clearly showed the cast members which would make people want to see them.

I think one of the posters for Kong: Skull Island was really well done. The one with King Kongs' silhouette with the sunset and 5 soldiers on water forming a triangle pointing towards Kong. This might be the most recent example of a really good poster, in my opinion at least.

This is an interesting topic to discuss since movie posters are such an under appreciated art form that not only is mean to advertise a film, but summarize the entire plot, tone, and vision of the film's story. I appreciate old style movie posters that were hand drawn, hand painted, or matte painted, just as much as I appreciate modern movie posters that are done on the computer or photoshop since technology and art evolves, but at the same time I can understand why a lot of people are fed up with the digitally made film posters of today. For me, most movie posters now lack that artistic flair to them, as they just feel like they use the same color scheme (Disney for example is obsessed with blue and orange), same format, are bloated with so many characters or elements that doesn't feel pleasing to the eye, such as most (if not all) modern day blockbusters, or feel corporate rather than artistic (look at dungeons and dragon for example). I wish we can go back to the simpler days of movie posters using few elements, a black background with a single image on it, or have a unique look to it, and I know I'm not alone when I say that. Thankfully some movie posters today do have a unique look to them that actually represents the film quite well or go back to being hand-drawn/painted, along with being pleasing to the eye as works of art.

Weirdly enough, I have to say the poster for Cocaine Bear stood out when I was at the theater and saw it in the hallway. No head salad, just a bear roaring, white powdery effects all around it, all black & white except the Bear in the title being red. It conveys the idea of the movie pretty well I think, though I haven't seen the movie so it could be completely wrong. But it did stand out compared to all the head salad ones.

To be totally honest with myself, I never really gave it a Second thought about movie posters. I usually watch trailers to determine if I want to go and see the movies but yes, there are lots of iconic movie posters, that make you want to see the movies. Great video!

I think that the Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is a perfect example for what movie posters should be like. It has a story, it grabs the viewer’s attention and has massive detail in the small corner.

I gotta argue that the posters for Scream 6 were actually really great. Maybe not all of the floating head ones (although they served a purpose for a whodunnit) but the poster you guys displayed on Ghost face in Time Square had a ton of Easter eggs and other stuff in it. I don't think that one was just churned out by some artist who just needed to get something to the studio immediately. I think the Scream franchise actually does a lot of fun (not always successful) things with their marketing.

Commercials, trailers, posters, merchandise, interviews, etc. It's all over-saturated greed and it's everywhere. All future art is going to feel lifeless compared to times when people actually created art, not corporations. And the only art that will feel like anything is that which points this fact out.

I've had a love for movie posters since I was a kid! I used to walk through every hallway of the theater to browse every one like they were masterpieces in a museum. When I got my own apartment, I actually decorated my walls with them! My favorite of all time was the teaser poster for "Star Wars: Episode I". That image of li'l Ani with Vader's shadow... Awesome! Awesome to the max! I absolutely agree that the art has been lost because I haven't seen a poster that I've wanted to own in a long time. A long time.

I think that one of the posters for 2022’s The Batman was absolutely gorgeous. It is the red and black poster with the silhouette of batman in the rain, by far one of my favorite posters of all time.

I haven't seen it in the comments yet, but I love the custom artwork done for movies at Alamo Drafthouse. Done by Mondo who appears to be out on their own now doing other things also. They are iconic, and unique.

Been watching this channel for a couple of years and this is your best video yet guys! Really feels like the culmination of a lot of lessons and improvements you've been making over that time. Loved it!

Nailed this video hard. Being an artist and video film graduate, I hope to make cool posters for any films I may one day make to pay homage to these legends. I hope studios can wake up

This is the topic I didn't know I needed. Excellent video.

I work in the cinema industry. There are still plenty of great posters. The studio send us several copies and i always snag one of the good ones for my wall. The Wonder Woman 84 poster comes to mind. It was unique and intriguing in its bold simplicity

At 3:05, that's an image from The Dark Tower by Stephen King. I was curious as to why Struzan had painted that, since the image wasn't used for the recent movie adaptation. I looked it up. It was a painting Struzan did for The Mist. In the beginning of The Mist, the main character is a movie poster artist. He's shown in his studio making movie posters. A lot of them are for movies that already exist, but one is for The Dark Tower. It's a sly nod to hardcore King fans, who will recognize the image immediately.

One other issue is that the promotion for the film has to span across different aspect ratios. The vertical movie poster is one of them, but there’s also billboards, banner ads, soundtrack album art, etc. It seems like there’s a more of a web approach now, as opposed to things descending from the poster.

I think the poster for Wes Anderson's 'The french dispatch' (the one in cartoon style) is one of the best when it comes to graphics made for recent movies. It's styling that imitates the front pages of The New Yorker references the fact, that the movie is a sort of tribute to the magazine. You can see all the main characters in their most recognisable scenes, and the background setting contains symbols from the stories told in the movie. The colours and style just scream Wes Anderson, so the poster does a great job capturing the feel of the movie, in my view.

I would argue he was a provider of the face salad, but did so by hand. That's, essentially, what the phantom menace poster was.

as a artist myself, this video was needed

Remedy's Control (video game) had a pretty cool set of posters and key art. The painterly style reminded me of older films.

Probably cost cutting. Instead of hiring an outside artist to give a quality poster, theyll just get an inside effects person to photoshop a poster for them. But whats worse than the death of the poster, is the desth of a trailer. The stupidity of a teaser FOR a teaser trailer and then theres the trailer that gives the best scenes and surprises of the movie away. I cant watch ANY trailer for a movie i want to see because id risk a spoiler.

I believe that both movie posters and trailers are suffering at the hands of the same enemy. That enemy is speed. The time from the first trailer/poster to streaming at home is almost the blink of an eye. But before the internet, movie marketing was a slow drip. When a poster appeared in the lobby, we pondered it deeply, like an art critic to a Picasso. Magazines, tv, and newspapers provided small tidbits of information and occasionally a picture or two. We anticipated the film’s release, like a kid anticipates Christmas morning. But today, we rarely stand in lines outside the theater. We rarely wait in lobbies. We rush in, optionally grab snacks, watch the movie, and rush out to the parking lot. Film marketing and coverage are fed through the internet firehose. We don’t spend weeks discussing the marketing with friends, we watch a RU-vid video that tells us all we need to know. I am not “bad-mouthing” the internet, or saying things were better “back in my day”. I am saying that something has been lost, as is the natural course of time.

Thank you for bringing this man's work to our attention. I was not familiar with the painstaking work that brings even the movie poster, an element of the film we take for granted without thinking about, to life. That iconic image that is conjured when mentioning a movie. And it's not just about the design but the meticulous level of detail and utter craftsmanship. Moviemaking was once an art form. I don't know if it even matters anymore whether or not a.i. does all the work. The way these soulless corporate "by the numbers" people work, it may as well already be that way.

I miss the days of Drew Strusan and others movie posters. They had character, mystery and art to them that's just not there anymore in today's posters. Technology and impatience killed the movie poster.

My favorite "recent" movie poster is from "It Follows", the one with the rear-view window. Also the Scream VI poster at 05:00 looks great 🔥

Great video - I'm new to your channel. I live over a theater, and just yesterday the new "Indiana Jones" poster caught my attention because it's just so lifeless and visually muddy. Loved your analysis - I grew up on '70s Bob Peak, and heard of Saul Bass, but wasn't familiar with Drew Struzan at all. Thanks for the introduction!

Huge movie poster collector here with an emphasison sci-fi, fantasy, and action/adventure movies. Big fan of Struzan's. Most of my collection is from the 80s, the era of my childhood/teens. I agree, in recent decades, movie posters have become boring. I've almost stopped looking for recent posters but continue to hunt for older posters.

You are an ARTIST in the questions you ask, the topics you choose. You're a philosopher, and i am here for it!

What an awesome video, so much history in under 10 minutes. This was amazing. Can really see what you mean with how a lot of posters now don’t have a patch on older posters. They were awesome works of art. Now as you said it’s just floating heads. It’s like how a lot of gaming covers, esp between 2006 to 2016 were “Main character (usually a guy) on cover holding gun”

I hope some day we get illustrated posters back in popularity.

The last time I watched a movie by just looking at the poster was ‘The Jungle Book (2016)’. I had gone to watch BvS but it was removed from the theatre, and then I glanced at this amazing Jungle Book poster & immediately decided to watch that. Definitely one of my best movie experiences ever.

They are so lazy nowyadays because of those floading heads. Be createive for god sake

Ok mostly agree. But John Wick 2 with the circle of guns and Knives Out with the circle of knives don't really fit your other examples, and to me are a great representation of what the films are about as well as iconic images that stick in my head when I think about those movies.

You could still do something interesting for multiple character posters. Imagine if for the Mario movie they made posters for Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad, but when you put them next to each other it looks like the character select screen for SMB2 (US), which happens to be a stage with curtains. That could even work for the sequel.

I hoped to see Everything Everywhere All At Once's alternative poster. The circular one.

I was thinking about this last week, thanks for itching the scratch on my brain!

Really enjoyed this video! Here the question for me also arises whether artistic posters like those of Bass/Struzan etc would even appeal to todays "main" cinema audience because of its deviation from the norm... as a hobby artist myself and also just having finished my masters degree in film science I would LOVE to finally see some kind of artistic chance in the film business (and not done by AI), even if it´s just in the way the movies are being advertised

Maybe another issues would be the loss of a single "canvas" before you only had the theatrical poster which seems like a standard but now you have to fit your "poster" to many aspect ratios, landscape or portrait modes and even resolutions, because it could be part of the side of a bus or the rectangular icon in a streaming app, and old posters are somewhat "inflexible" in that matter and instead of using a proper painting tou got a PSD which you can edit however you like, I can bet that's also why studio execs are more interested in modern face salads, as to need to always leave the franchise logo and lead actors faces visible as they believe is whst drives sales, it is what it is.

I love the sheer endless amount of videos relating to anything vaguely to art „This was better in the past…“

I actually have a lot of thoughts on this. I am a big fan of Struzan as most people from that generation are. One thing I find funny tho is that he used the exact same head salad format for most of his work. It really was just the style and textural aspect that carried those designs in my opinion. Which I think there is something to say for that. It is important. But I also don't think that something needs to be created in a physical traditional medium too feel unique and be good design. It's interesting cause a lot of the modern posters you showed while bringing up issues, I think are actually very successful in being distinct and communicating the vibe/feel of a movie. The guardians 3 posters for example are all very well done. I think another that came to mind was the Scream 6 poster. Interestingly both of those were posters which had a series showcasing individual characters. I don't think the real issue with those types of posters is just that they detract from one strong central image for the movie. I think that has a lot more to do with the age we live in now. Things aren't advertised the same. Most things are pushed primarily on social media, and social media promotes a more consistent drip feed of promotion. And while someone would have been ok walking by and seeing the same poster ad on their way into a store, reposting the same thing again on SM is not effective. So people need to come up with a solution or way to present varied imagery that feels like a series. While I do think that it's a bit sad and maybe less effective, the old way of doing things wouldn't be as effective today either. Also, back Struzans day all of us were going to guy a physical copy of the movie and have it on our shelf. That alone also increases the impact of that imagery and I think is why so many of us remember old movie "posters" so well.

Masterpiece as usual. Keep them coming

The Super Mario Bros. Movie may have a cliché poster BUT it used the color circle so beautifully!!

Thanks for letting me know about the term "Head salade". I will now be using this in as many conversations as possible.

great video I would have to say a movie poster that I enjoy lately from a sort of new film from 2019 is Good Time by the Safdie Brothers. The illustration style with the crazy neon color and Robbert Pattinson inside the sprite bottle is amazing.

I'd like to mention John Alvin who has done heaps of memorable movie posters over the years and is right up there with Drew Struzan.

7:25 Glad you brought that up. I swear when you went through the history of posters I saw some floating heads in these iconic posters as well.

Because posters don't carry the same promotional weight that they once did, modern movie posters just seem like an afterthought from the studios, with many of them being lackluster Photoshop. I think Paul Shipper does a good job of continuing the Struzan style into the modern era. He has done some great stuff. The studios should probably start using some of his work as their primary promotional poster; it would certainly stand out in the era of "head salad."

7:00 Ain’t no way you can call the Lord of War and The Truman Show posters soulless. They are two of the best movie posters of all time.

I still remember the great movie posters from my youth - Jaws, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, Rollerball.

I don't know, I love some of the modern posters, including even some of the ones you've put here, like Dunkirk's, Soho's or Rogue One's.

Look up the movie poster for Hugo. It has a small head salad at the top, and a beautiful image underneath with Hugo hanging from the arms of a clock as snow falls around him. More movie posters should be that majestic.

Dude, this video is really good. I've always been very interested in posters and film art in general, how it's always been done and the creativity of the artists behind it. It's kind of complicated and sad to see that this has been lost with the new generation, making everything more generic and ugly, but there are still those committed to preserving techniques and the creativity of these projects.

As one of the "guilty perpetrators" (I've been designing key art for over 30 years), I can say there is one thing that "destroyed" the "art" of the movie poster... the computer. Before the advent of the computer in the mid-90s, we started out with a completely blank canvas... anything goes... you could even tie and airplane in a knot... but after computers (and I'm even talking about the brief pre-personal computer era in the mid-80s, where "computer" work was done by specialized shops) designers who were not particularly "artistic" began to depend heavily, and/or completely, on production photography which, naturally, led to a plethora of "big heads." Once designers began to learn how to use computers and their various filters and FX, another divergence occurred within the design community and persists today... those who had the artistic/illustrative skills, could still use photography to utilize their vision (the availability of stock photography expanded this exponentially), think the Batman poster with the destroyed buildings creating the bat symbol, that requires a lot of personal illustrative talent on the part of the designer... and lesser "artistic" designers who simply utilize the photography as they find it, dress it up with filters, flares and fades and churn out stuff like the Bourne Identity poster. But what you're about so see is the re-emergence of "artistic" poster design. With AI, even the least artistic designer with an idea will soon be able to see their conceptual vision realized, even if it far exceeds their personal talent. Conversely, what we also might see, is the decline of actual designers and artists contributing to the process and more interference by "suits" who think of themselves as "creative" -- and trust me, they've had their fingers in the pie all along, contributing mightily to the mediocrity of the poster art -- who will think nothing of giving AI a few commands and then shilling their own crap to the "upper suits" of the marketing department. We're on the cusp of a brave new world... not sure which way it's going to work out for the art of movie posters. *sigh*

Ironic that Nerdstalgic is citing a company churning out these posters and that part of the charm and artistry is gone, when the Nerdstalgic channel pays random people to write their videos so they can churn them out. The posters may not be creative and original, but at least they aren't outright plagiarizing like Nerdstalgic has (due to said "video churning").

Teaser, IMAX, 4DX and Dolby Digital posters are 9/10 times better than the actual posters.

This is such an interesting video with a topic I knew nothing about

This whole episode was like that old man shakes fist at cloud meme from The Simpsons.

Don't forget John Alvin, another of the great poster artists whose work spanned the 1970s-2000s

"Even when executed well, they feel soulless." - I usually agree with just about everything Nerdstalgic talks about but sometimes I hear something and I'm like ".......Um, no not at all????" But that's how opinions be, of course, I'm not trying to say anyone's wrong. On the subject of modern movie posters I usually don't even SEE the posters for movies I see talked about a ton..... unless the poster becomes used often in memes (you know.) or if I'm following it closely like No Way Home. I forget films even *have* posters, and I figure it's because they've been so far surpassed in efficiency by other forms of telling people a thing exists.

What killed the movie poster is Adobe Photoshop and programs like it. Plus movies don't have the same cultural impact as they used to. Everybody can still recall scenes from Jawa or Back To The Future. Does anything from most modern movies linger like that? Not even close.

I completely agree with everything in this video!! I'm curious though, how would you keep this art form in the current meta modernist film landscape?

A lot of the Imax posters are great. The more recent creature feature films such as Godzilla, Kong, and Planet of the Apes have posters I like as well.

Alien Covenant, while a terrible film, had one of my favorite posters ever. Just an Alien's head, the release date, and the word "Run" on a black background. Phenomenal

To some degree, the modern cinema is advertised on RU-vid, Instagram, TikTok and all the major social media platforms, while a poster is still one of the advertisement methods, it isn't the key seller to the audience, so productions have started putting less and less effort into the beauty of it. These days, we are more drawn towards a movie on the basis of its trailers and teasers. So, it is all about time.

Better Call Saul had some nice posters honestly

I remember working at an old RKO cinema on Long Island back in the mid 1980's and that theatre had Half Sheet (short and wide) and Insert (tall & skinny) sized frames as well as the standard One Sheet poster frames. I remember when a new movie came out an artist came to the theatre and painted a custom Half Sheet and Insert posters based on the full version. You couldn't tell they were custom painted. I wish I had been able to keep some of those.

I Love the Orginal Spider-Man 3 Poster where Peter has his back turned aginst the wall with the reflection of the black suit in the window

I saw a post once on a video like this from a guy that made some crappy modern posters. He said that most of the people making them, including himself, want to make great posters like Drew Struzan did but their bosses and clients just want something fast and cheap and generic.

It should also be noted, the film trailer has overtaken the film poster as the primary marketing tool at studios’ disposal, especially after the rise of RU-vid. I remember walking through the halls of the multiplex choosing which movies I wanted to see based off of posters or standees, now it’s trailers and Rotten Tomatoes scores.

It’s even worse on dvd covers, all they do is put a background colour, the main character (or a few if lucky), and then just put the title on top.

Oh not just movie posters, but book covers as well, especially fantasy

6:51 Idk I think calling these two a "trope" is a stretch. I think the John Wick 2 poster is reasonably creative, and Knives Out is not only in a different genre, but that's not even an effect for the poster, it's just a real set-piece in the film lmao

While working as an artist at Wildstorm during the Nineties, I heard that one of the editors of the "Death of Superman" took his big royalty check and bought the, "Big Trouble" painting.

I love your videos man I swear

First thing that comes to mind, is Detective Pikachu. The picture of a neon city, and the giant lightning bolt shadow breaking up the neon reflections on the rain soaked road, with Pikachu in the background. It caught my attention when I first saw it, and I now have the poster hanging in my room.

The part of listing movie poster tropes is almost verbatim from a Doktor Skipper video called the problem with modern movie posters.

I think the premise of this episode doesn’t hold water. I agree with the idea that old movie posters are better. But let’s be real, it’s because we like that someone put “more effort” into painting it than what we think a modern day poster maker would do. But we presume they don’t put in as much work because everything is cookie cutter looking but we don’t know how long the original illustrations took, or how many details they needed to change in photoshop that requires time and effort. But again, I like the paintings more and I like that the artist has more of a say in what’s going on and putting their own touches on it! But everyone’s been using the same formats for the longest time and that’s mostly what this video is trying to say.

It just depends on the quality of the end product. Paul Shipper did great painted posters for the recent star wars films. And films like Indiana Jones, and the OG Star Wars DID have multiple posters. It's just that the blessing of time has made them stand out as iconic

Good video, very interesting as someone who collects posters, I do enjoy some of the head salad type posters, but look at composition and structure as well as color when I collect posters. I can understand those posters like the Hell Boy one looked gorgeous, while others don’t. I feel it’s a matter of opinion when it comes to certain designs.

Nowadays the main poster is just to show off all the characters while the side posters can be more creative

Very cool to see Darabont was paying tribute to a particular person when showing the movie posters the character has made in "The Mist".