Redbox, and the Death of an Artform

Okay, so, "original content tomorrow"... also known as five days later. Screw you, real life, and your stupid paying job.
Speaking of which, I'm adding Amazon links in these posts now, probably to a stupid degree. If anyone wants to buy something via the links, I'd be much obliged. Help me quit my day job and bring you more quality work!
All whoring myself out aside, here we go...

So, over time we've watched the art of the movie poster slowly die off. Sure, not everything from the past era was great, we do tend to look at things through rose-colored glasses, but there was a more common trend for movies to be accompanied by wildly creative, emotionally driven art 'back in the day'. While there are certainly some good posters being released now, you've typically just got some guy doing a slap-dash photoshop mash-up of the main characters in a spread that does little to tell you anything about the story you're about to see.

Just to prove I'm not entirely against modern poster work, here's one of my favorite recent ones, Superman Returns. We get some fantastic art with great use of colors, we get the character, we DON'T get some random exploitation of the main actors, and we even get a hint of the Christ imagery the movie is going to subject us to. Good work.

Seriously, though, such a downward spiral. Check some of these classics of yesteryear against some of the modern day atrocities.
Good: Nightmare on Elm St. (this whole series has good posters, up to part 5. Check 'em) A little sexy, a little scary, and it gives you a good feel for the impending nightmare related horror that's coming. Bad: The Unborn. This is a still from the movie because we were too lazy to make any original images. There is a scared girl in this movie. She is wet.
Good: Lawrence of Arabia Its Epic, its original, its colorful. One of a series of paintings for this movie that depict both the scope of the adventure, and the power-house performance of Peter O'Toole. Bad: Cop Out Maybe its unfair to compare the marketing campaigns of an epic and a buddy comedy, but what the hell, we're talking about the time taken to make a damn poster. This is Bruce Willis' head. This is probably not his body. Tracy Morgan is not holding that gun. We could not take the time go get them to pose in a picture together, they had to be taken separately, and then cropped together. There is no depth to this image. Some intern put shadows on the wall behind them.
Here's a direct comparison between the old Baron Munchausen, and the New DVD cover. Check out the great artwork on that original, the fun and appropriate image... kind of like a political cartoon full of all kinds of in-jokes to catch your attention, and make you chuckle after you've seen the film and it all makes sense. And then there's the new art, which features 3 people from the movie looking at shit. And the resolution is all grainy, because they're taken from stills of the film, not high quality production photos.

And, even though I've already given you 3 examples, which is enough to prove undeniably that my point is correct, here is yet another shitty modern poster: Mama Mia!   Check out the curve of this girl's neck down the left side. Her left, not yours. Yeah, is she some sort of giraffe-like creature in this film? See, they wanted an image of her holding the bouquet down, but they also wanted to have her looking up hopefully, but the photo of her doing both those things didn't really work, so they used Photoshop to mash two photos together, connecting them at the neck. Yes, look again, this girl has two necks, one on top of the other.

What does this have to do with Redbox?

The reason that movie art is on the decline in quality has generally been because of the home video industry. Its big, and it makes a lot more money than the movie theater these days. But there was a time when movie studios wouldn't have dreamed of DVDs becoming such a huge market, and as such, they didn't include home video in the payment contract for their poster artists. As such, most artists would have to be paid again for their awesome paintings. A little for each cover sold, in fact, which is a lot more than the number of poster units they were originally paid for. So, rather than pay the artist a fair wage to re-use the paintings, studios are just having some intern whip up a Photoshop POS that can be mass-produced for nothing. Between that and the fact that studios now market films entirely off of the actors in them rather than the plot of the film, you lose iconic artwork like this, and in its place, get some slap-dash crap like this. Hey! That vaguely resembles one of the original paintings! Only now it looks like one of Lucas's kids did it! Neat!

Lately, Redbox has taken this movement one step further. Not only do they not want to pay artists to adorn their many boxes with movie art, but since the art isn't attached to any package, and their advertising space is very small, Redbox has gone even cheaper with their art selections.
Cheaper than a virtually unpaid digital imaging intern? Yes, Redbox has become the Mexican day-laborer of the DVD art industry.
And, of course, since Redbox is killing Blockbuster, even without physical displays, its only time before the film industry notices, and only hires the cheapest of crap artists to adorn their boxes.
One great thing to come out of this: humor. Check out some of my these, my favorite bad-art picks from Redbox's gallery. Soon to replace all the visual appeal of the movie department at a Wal-mart near you...

Funny People- Ho, man, look at this awesome work. Such effort put into portraying both the laughs delivered during the stand-up comic acts, AND the thought provoking story of Adam Sandler's isolation and how his life is changed by cancer.
Yep, you can tell they cared about this movie.
Most surprising is the total lack of Adam Sandler and Seth Rogan photoshopped together into a photo they didn't actually pose with each other for.

Harry Potter 6- This time, at least, there's some Harry Potter related imagery we can draw from. There's a train, and he does ride a train for a couple seconds in this movie. And there is a pair of glasses, and Harry does wear glasses.
What stumps me here is why they chose to use this crappy art, when there was already some crappy free Photoshop art in existence from the DVD packaging. Was even that collage too expensive?
Compared to some, though, this is a milestone in Redbox marketing.

Public Enemies- Starring Johnny Depp! (not pictured)

Night at the Museum 2- I kind of like this one because it makes you think. Its like a very minimalist puzzle, where they could have gone with the actual DVD cover, a Photoshopped picture of Ben Stiller and Robin Williams.
Rather, you're given a few clues here, if you don't know what the movie's about. Okay, looks like a museum and title says 'Museum', check. There's a dinosaur skeleton, gotcha. Half of its blue, half of its orange; hmm, is the art faded from the sun? No, no, wait. Either this is a light-side/dark-side reference, or its Night/Day. Without Lucas attached, we'll go Night/Day. And... there are sparkles. On the Day side of the image.
Okay, the movie is about a magic dinosaur skeleton that grants wishes to museum patrons, but only during the day. Close?

Terminator 4- Jesus Christ, who did the CG work on this cover? This is awful. Its the kind of terminator I would have expected to shoot at in a Playstation One game or something.
I know, you thought I was kidding when I said art interns are the ones doing the DVD covers, but here's your proof. Maybe they should have just gone with the old 'still-shot ripped from the movie' maneuver here. This thing looks so bad, its like looking at a Dark Horse Comics Terminator cover.

No, no, I take that back, those, for their audience of thousands (a fraction of Redbox's business) were usually superior to this crap in about every possible way.

Inglorious Basterds- The best part of this image is its versatility. Sure, I guess it COULD be used on a movie about scalping Nazis. But they could also use it for Halloween as Michael Myers' hand. Or any slasher. Any at all. In fact, just any movie with a knife, or blood, or, at this rate, clouds.

This image, by Redbox standards, could apply to about half of the movies in the box at any given time. I expect to see it again in the future, probably on several releases at once, just to be cost-effective.

Basterds, btw, subject to one of the great cavalcades of unused poster art. Check out what could have been.

Bruno- This is probably my favorite one of all, as you really can't even tell what the tone of the film was from the description Redbox gives.
Something about a boy seeking to become a famous star? Wow, its just like Rock Star, with that nice Wahlburg boy in it. And look at that wonderful sunrise, that golden meadow. This is going to be a movie about hope and redemption, I can tell.

I hope, just hope to God almighty, that someone rented this movie under those pretenses, and then managed to make it to the part where Bruno's penis screams at you from its urethra.



So, yeah, there we go. It seems like I had a good conclusion to this...

Oh yeah, go look at some of this cool art shit and encourage artists that are trying to bring back movie and DVD art. The Alamo Drafthouse, my favorite theater, will sometimes commission artists to do limited edition posters to classic films as fundraiser events (check out that one of Bumpeses' dogs!), and you can also find the occasional art exhibit of new posters for old movies. Some domestic, some abroad.

Anywhere you can find quality and originality you have to reward that, pay it attention, share it with others. If you don't take the time to encourage the artists and the guys who pay them, then all of the cool work that keeps them fed, and makes the world a little more awesome and beautiful, will simply fade away.

Also, again them links to all the shit I referenced above. Buy some of it so I can afford to keep writing. Thanks.