Wanted: Sexy SWF Looking 4 Fun

It's Friday and prime time for the studios to drop a new movie poster on the web. Aint It Cool News got the scoop and the winner is Wanted, a new flick with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy by Timur Bekmambetov.

Before I comment on the new poster I just want to say that I'm tired of the typical Bad Boys action movie poster. It's gone way beyond the cliche at this point. I bring this up because on the right you'll another Wanted poster which came out earlier this week. It looks like they grabbed the city backdrop from Transformers and poorly tried to combine Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. The positions of the two characters don't make any sense, he's about to shoot and she's just posing? No thought, just thrown together and voi-la...crap! What bothers me most of all is how generic they made it. Timur Bekmambetov is a visionary director. His other films Nightwatch and Daywatch are heavy on the CG, useless in parts, but complete eye candy. So here you have this guy, a visionary, with a very generic poster. What does that spell, poor returns. I just don't get it? Why would the studio sign off on this, they should be protecting their investment better. I won't even comment on the trailer.

So back to today's poster above. Similar key art as the Bad Boys one, but freakin' sweet! I'm glad they gave her a ton of desaturation and contrast to showcase her slender body, the gun and of course her killer tattoos. It's cropped really nice and I'm glad they didn't try to fill up the white space with logo and movie credits. I have to say that I think the artist did a really good job.

It's funny, I did a poster competition for Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles using key art Fox studios provided and one of the images by Jill Greenberg was Sarah Connor in the exact same position. What does this mean? Well it's either a new/established trend; Jill Greenberg shot stills for Wanted also; or it's a plain old rip. I can imagine that coming up with a new and dynamic ways to showcase a lead in a movie must be difficult. So personally I'm okay with it. I love the photograph's composition and I think the posters above show us that a good composition can be ruined by a crappy treatment.