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The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

Every year, countless audience-insulting ads arrive to support the theories of the doomsday crowd.

The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

Movie poster design probably isn’t as lost an art as many claim it to be, but every year, countless audience-insulting ads arrive to support the theories of the doomsday crowd. Granted, there are plenty of tossed-together one-sheets out there that are easy targets for criticism, but none ticked off this poster lover like the doozies included here. From glaring dependence on star power to the dreaded sliver formula, these design snafus are the ones that made you want to pull a Banksy at the multiplex, whipping out your Krylon can and doing a little defacing, if only to counteract the woes of daft commercialism.


Dishonorable Mention


The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

American Hustle

The only reason the poster for American Hustle was dropped to the “Dishonorable Mention” section is its retro-outfitted stars are so darn pretty to look at. Bradley Cooper runs away with the trophy for the year’s Best Use of Curlers, while Amy Adams follows with the year’s Best Use of Cleavage. But, really, couldn’t the team at Sony have tried a bit harder to evoke the film’s mood and period? There’s an argument to be made that this movie, a crime epic enamored of tacky surfaces, deserves an ad campaign that likewise relies only on base attractions, like boilerplate ’70s font and name stars with throwback hairstyles. Ultimately, though, it wildly undersells a film, that, unlike David O. Russell’s last two efforts, cuts the tether to the kind of industry conventions represented here.


The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

As Cool As I Am

You’ll find any number of modern, romance-infused dramedies that are bent on resorting to the least inspired design elements to lure in an audience. A few hastily assembled faces? Check. Generic tagline? Check. Even more generic font? Natch. So, while the one-sheet for As Cool As I Am, a Claire Danes-starrer that nobody saw, is a bit of a stand-in for a whole lot of strikingly similar failures, it also might be the most offensive. Negative space can be a virtue in many cases, but here it only underlines a vast creative void. Also, let’s guess what the characters, each trimmed out of a separate screenshot, are smirking at. Could it be the designers? Or maybe the gullible would-be viewer who finds this art compelling? As fine as these advertised actors may be, you know what’s not cool? Laziness.


The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

The Book Thief

The saddest thing about this poster for The Book Thief is that it welcomes the cheap shots so many took when evaluating the film, which is worth a lot more than the dismissive label of “Oscar bait.” With a pyre of books burning pristinely in the background, the ad places a grossly plasticized Liesel (Sophie Nelisse) front and center, her complexion looking as if she’s been sprayed with the glaze that fast-food restaurants use to pretty up their grub in commercials. What’s more, 20th Century Fox tackily opted to include the note, “From the studio that brought you Life of Pi,” as if the stranded-at-sea adventure has anything to do with this drama of historical tragedy. The comparison, frankly, is a little disgraceful. To quote Hesh Rabkin from a season-four episode of The Sopranos, “You’re trivializing the Holocaust. Frankly, if you’ve got that kind of covert anti-semitism, I’d like you to leave my house.”


The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

10. The Big Wedding

Word on the street is this poster for The Big Wedding actually boasts a cast photo—as in, all of the A-listers from this super-stuffed ensemble were in the same room to produce this group image. Excuse me for being more than a little skeptical. Amanda Seyfried may indeed be leaning on the shoulder of Ben Barnes (rather than a P.A.), and Bob De Niro may be holding Susan Sarandon tight, but Christine Ebersole looks like she was in another country, while Diane Keaton is gazing into the reaches of space. Even if the rumors are true, and these players somehow stood together to create the first group photo that mimics a Photoshop hatchet job, the ad nevertheless continues the wretched, Valentine’s Day-style myth that oodles of airbrushed stars will equal oodles of fun.

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The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

9. What Maisie Knew

I hate to complain about being handed free stuff, but the most tasteless bit of movie swag I received this year was easily a pen from the folks promoting What Maisie Knew, an adaptation of the famed novel about a custody battle over the eponymous girl (played in the film by Onata Aprile). The pen, its tubular shape half transparent, contains a miniature Maisie, who, when the pen is tipped up and down, slides between the outstretched hands of her mother and father. That’s right: The pen is essentially “Child Custody: The Game.” Such an epically ill-advised marketing item is mirrored in this design, which tries in vain to contrast a child’s innocence against the ills of adulthood (symbolized by the mean, imposing city). Nevermind the fact that Maisie looks like she could fall to her death from that swing at any moment. In attempting to emphasize Maisie’s playful cuteness to elicit sympathy, this movie’s promotional material cheapens the gravity of parental separation, and more importantly, its collateral damage.


The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

8. The Hangover Part III

If there are people who were breathlessly awaiting a third Hangover film, I don’t know them. And I don’t believe I know anyone who would agree that this franchise, however societally ingrained its first installment, warrants the unfunny, arrogant aping of a certain Harry Potter teaser poster. This one-sheet, whose only amusing detail is the likening of a burning Las Vegas to an under-siege magical empire, is primarily a testament to the notion that Todd Phillips’s bro-love saga is fresh out of ideas, so much so that it can’t even whip up a decent poster to call its own. Naturally, this design is intended as an exercise in lampooning, and perhaps even as an indication that the Wolfpack members act like fantastical children. But when was the last time this type of spoof misfired with such undue overconfidence?



The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

7. The Butler

Before it became Lee Daniels’ The Butler, an agreed-upon title that ended yet another feud between Harvey Weinstein and the MPAA, this sprawling civil rights opus was promoted like the most shameless awards bait in town, safely generalized within inches of its secretly vibrant life. It’s criminal that a movie with personality to burn was first saddled with a poster that has absolutely none. For all those disrespected, “easily manipulated” moviegoers, there’s also a cast list pretentiously stacked as a high as a Jenga tower, and poised to crush the head of Forest Whitaker’s titular White House attendant. Harvey Weinstein has been known to force his filmmakers to vanilla the shit out of their projects. Rest assured that the same goes for advertising departments.



The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

6. Lovelace

The absolutely dreadful Lovelace, this year’s winner for Movie Most Likely to Leave You Wanting a Shower, offered two terrible poster options. This one was riddled with praise from outlets as obscure as “Handbag.com.” But the key offender remains the movie’s who-the-hell-cares lead one-sheet, which, like the American Hustle ad, seems to think ’70s representation begins and ends with curvy text and HAIR. Honestly, there’s truth in this advertising, as hollow cluelessness and soft-core Amanda Seyfried are precisely what you’ll get from this behind-the-scenes-of-Deep Throat skeeve-fest. “X Marks the Legend!” Or, ya now, your crossing this off your to-see list.

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The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

5. Jane Mansfield’s Car

Wrongfully overlooked by the majority of critics this year, Jayne Mansfield’s Car, Billy Bob Thornton’s latest dual effort as actor and director, had plenty of virtues to boast, most notably a surprising, gonzo lack of sexual inhibitions, and poignant, complex bonds between men. Those virtues sadly don’t include this total bust of a poster, which tells you virtually nothing about the film, and incongruously pairs a square-looking cast of mostly unknowns with a tire-track-streaked street beneath a generic page-rip. “Torn apart. Driven together,” the tagline reads, promising dysfunction in a way the super-sunny reunion pic does not. This ad may not seem egregious at the outset, but ultimately, I’d pose the same question to every person who comes across it: Does it make you want to see this movie, even a little bit?



The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

4. Paranoia

And so we come to the first of our list-topping quartet of slivered disasters. I haven’t seen Paranoia, but I’ve heard it doesn’t actually have anything to do with paranoia. Nor, evidently, does its poster, which looks like roughly a million other posters for disposable actioners, which cast heartthrobs as on-the-run cyphers and toss paychecks to aging actors like Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. It’s as if there’s some unspoken rule in Hollywood marketing: When in doubt, just slit the imagery in pieces, and if you skew it diagonally, what the hell? All the better. My favorite thing about this mess—by which I mean, its worst attribute—is the makeup so clearly caked on Ford and Oldman’s cheeks. If there’ anything to be paranoid about here, it’s clogged pores.



The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

3. Girl Most Likely

Beware the film that goes through multiple title changes, and gets so churned up in the Hollywood system that, by the time it comes out, it’s in a state of exasperated disrepair. All that sausage-factory hurt is here in the face of lead star Kristen Wiig, whose Girl Most Likely, previously titled Imogene, has a poster that’s basically the film-ad equivalent of caution tape. It’s enough of a sting to see that Annette Bening has been cast as yet another kooky mom, but the symbolism of her being artlessly boxed in just makes it all the worse. And if you’re gonna tell me that the shot of Darren Criss came from anything but a model-style shoot that has nothing to do with the film, you’ve got a case of that “insanity” that “runs in [this] family.”



The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

2. The Counselor

The Counselor may be a brilliantly divisive slice of can’t-put-your-finger-on-it trash, but its key poster is one fat “Fuck you!” to filmgoers, not even lifting a finger to offer anything of value apart from the mugs of its five lead stars. Unless Ridley Scott’s Cormac McCarthy adaptation has a pivotal plot point involving venetian blinds, this is quite possibly the most insulting poster in years, implying that viewer attraction extends as far as their capacity for celebrity recognition. I guess we should be thankful that they kept all the actors’ heads at a relatively even level? Anyone?

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The Worst Movie Posters of 2013

1. Don Jon

Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems like a largely likable guy, and I’m among those who think his directorial debut, Don Jon is a largely likable movie, until, of course, it tries to pretend it’s about anything but what it’s actually about. Functioning much like a song, the first two-thirds of this rom-com-damning rom-com actually thrive on their lack of nuance, cruising through the riffs and refrains of the protagonist’s daily grind, and the misadventures involving web porn and those he’s grinding up against. But then it opts to go all falsely noble with the rise of sex-as-connection subplot, which is about as convincing as this couldn’t-be-bothered poster, which also goes for the sliver effect while plugging the film’s bullshit, last-act attempt at depth. Curiously, this movie about porn addiction seems to want you to think it’s about flowers, or puppies, or, I dunno, lemon meringue pie. Yeah, we get the “happy ending” double entendre, but that doesn’t change the fact that this ad is a manipulator of the worst kind, shamelessly pandering to the sort of blinder-wearing viewer the movie itself takes to task.

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

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