I’m normally a guy that likes to give foreigners the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to advertising. The only point of the game is to draw people in, and since every culture has at least a slightly altered idea of what’s sexy, what’s appealing, what’s classy and what’s cool, there’s really no point in acting like sophisticated douche bags and assuming we could have made more money by doing it the American way or the British way or the Canadian way. That being said, this foreign poster for Star Wars: A New Hope is quite possibly the worst major release movie poster I have ever encountered.
Throwing way too much important plot information out there and featuring a lizard with a sword very prominently, this nonsense was used to market A New Hope in Hungary during the film’s initial box office run. You can take a look at it in all its awful glory below, courtesy of Imgur…
Whoever drew this poster really could have benefitted from a Tim Gunn Project Runway critique because there’s simply too much shit going on. You can’t really outline plot in a movie poster. It’s far better to highlight a theme and try to give people the general gist of what’s happening. Also, it’s usually far better to highlight main characters rather than insert random lizard monsters.
Here’s to hoping Disney gives us something a little more visually appealing when the studio begins rolling out the marketing materials for the upcoming Star Wars.
