I just saw the poster for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for the first time today and it just highlights everything I hate about modern movie mosters. Movie posters used to be works of art, created by masterful artists. Modern posters, at least the vast majority of them, are just pure photoshop garbage.
I openely admit, I absolutely despise digital photography and still shoot with film 95% of the time. The only time I shoot digital is at family functions (so I dont have to spend hours in the darkroom developing and printing family pictures...BLAH) and when clients specifically ask for digital. So one might think I have a bias against digital art, but that isnt the case at all.
I absolutely LOVE a lot of the digital art that is out there. In fact, in regards to the number of art books that I purchase, digital art makes up a significant percentage of them. I own the complete series of Spectrum Books, which is now up to volume 23 (24 is up for pre order right now), I own the complete series of Expose books, which is now up to volume 11. I own the complete series of Exotique books, which is up to volume 7. I own 6 of the 8 Digital Painting Techniques books (still need to buy Vol. 7 & 8), and I own 5 of the 9 Digital Art Masters books (still need volumes 6-9). I also own a lot of Ballistic Publishigs other art books like their 2 Massive Black volumes. And all of my Expose and Exotique books are the special edition versions. Ballistic publishing and 3Dtotal are two of my favorite art book publishers and they focus pretty much exclusively on digital art.
Not to mention, I also own most of the art books released for the video games that I love like The Art of Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, Halo, Assassins Creed, Etc. So I definitely do not hate digtal art. In fact, its quite the contrary as I absolutely love it in most instances. I don't like digital photography, but that is for a lot of reasons beyond just the look of the pictures. I own a crapload of prints of digital art as well. So my hatred of modern movie posters has absolutely nothing to do with my feelings for digital art in general.
Before I go any further, let me just display the new poster for Guardians of the Galaxy 2:
Thats just absolutely atrocious in my book. If I didn't love the first one and had no idea what this movie was about, this poster would make me not want to see it. Its just awful in so many ways.
There was actually a contest to design the worst movie poster and the winner's poster really sums up most of what I hate about modern photoshopped movie posters:
Instead of creating a beautiful piece of art, like they used to do with movie posters, they now photoshop the stars heads next to other stars heads. Its basically become a standard model for bad movie posters. There are some that deviate from that model and are just as bad. Movie posters in general have just become a really chessy art form. Sure, there are always exceptions and you still see some quality modern posters here and there, but the vast majority of them are terrible.
Compare modern posters to some of the classic movie posters of the past. My favorites were always the painted posters but there have been some great photography posters as well.