Friday, August 15, 2014

QftWo 8/11-8/17: Imposters #64 - Lucy

I often complain that movie posters are just big shots of the lead staring straight at you. I'm not complaining here because 1) it's not a other white male, and 2) there's some artistry to the image. I over the white-on-black background color being mirrored by the black-on-white scheme to the lettering.

This suggests that the film will deal with duality, or perhaps a giant game of chess... The problem is that the poster is mysterious that it risks not telling the viewer anything or giving them many reasons to see this movie.


Scarlett, Freeman, Besson - it's kind of cool and confident that Lucy doesn't even bother with a tagline or other information to gain your interest. But cool color motifs aside, we've got nothing to go on.

The title "Lucy" tells us the film should be about a woman, but that's it. In fact, I'd say that's a pretty weak choice, but I like when Besson uses old-fashioned female names (e.g., Matilda).

So you can imagine how surprised I was when I saw the phone booth ads.

What's fun here is that it's a completely different take on the same idea - instead of including white and black in equal amounts and in opposing positions, everything's grey. The exception made for Ms. Johansson's eyes is a very nice touch as well.

Unfortunately, I can't say much for the tagline. For one thing, that whole "10% of the human brain" thing is total bs. For another, we don't know anything about her, just that she's got a massive advantage now. This may sound abit cynical, but I guess she'll be able to deus ex machina her way out of a 110-minute adventure?...

Anyway, the black letters look imposing and maybe sort of dangerous and quite cool against the greyscale backdrop. I also like that the one common element is the red release date in the corner - it stands out more nicely in this color scheme, I think.

You'd think it's bad promotion - one ad is highly-visible, yet tells you nothing, while the other one is kind of lame when you read it, although the colors are so neutral you might walk right by. The taxi ad has the brighter, more immediately eye-catching subway version, which makes some sense, but this is damn weird. Stylish and weird.

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