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Visual Representations of 15 Over-Used Movie Poster Clichés

By Emily Temple on
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Um, these movies probably have a sex scene. Or at least one hot girl.

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This article is pretty dumb. You're just taking similar posters and applying some sort of over-arching "cliche" to them pretending that it applies to all movies of that genre/style. You even repeat some movies which makes no sense at all.

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it's pretty easy to find patterns in things if you look selectively at what matches what. these are not every movie poster going and many can be found counter to type as well. little is really being said here.

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Remember, if your film stars Matthew McConaughey, he must be leaning against something/someone or have his arms folded. Why? Little T Rex arms!!!

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Seems like that Descent poster should get into trouble for copyright infringement, but I guess since Dali's not around to sue they got away with that.

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Yeah, I'd hardly call 'Far From Heaven' a romantic comedy, just because there is a red dress on the poster! Great, tragic poster though.

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Oddly, the poster for the original "42nd Street" uses both floaty heads and leg-arches, and still manages to be super awesome. http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Posters/A/Poster%20-%2042nd%20Street_01.jpg

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I wouldn't say that Coffy, All About My Mother, Far From Heaven, Tootsie (because Dustin Hoffman wears the red dress and isn't the typical female love interest) or Cat People are romantic comedies

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I bet you can find a lot of these type of posters. Clark Griswald is the ultimate hero.... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/Vacation1983.jpg/220px-Vacation1983.jpg

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Requiem for a Dream, although horrific, is not a horror story.

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I always notice that the streets at night in any big city are ALWAYS wet. It's not ever raining, and nothing else is wet, just the shiny, dark streets.

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Puss In Boots shouldn't really be in "The ultra-dramatic back-shot" collection because it was doing it on purpose because whomever designed the poster knew that the back-shot has been overused. Irony!

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I like what you've done collecting these together - but I'm not sure they're necessarily negatively cliched are they? Given the role of the poster is to attract the attention of folk who are likely to want to buy tickets to see the advertised film, aren't they more neat short-hands for genre and content? That's not to say if your film is original and quirky, you shouldn't get a poster to match, but a quirky, original poster for a generic, formulaic film is false advertising, and you're likely to cop a lot of negative feedback for this.

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That's crazy to see them all put together like this. It's no news how movie companies like doing the same thing over and over again to be safe but it's important to know that "some" of the color choices indicated here are important for the type of film or mood of the movie. Like somebody mentioned below the movies with more comforting themes.

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Just an additional note of movie poster pyschology... the usage of Orange and Blue ( and subsequent color wheel opposites, like purple and yellow) and gradienting between them is psychologically a very comforting visual aesthetic for us as a society... it even equates to the gels used in film lighting... the blueish night / cold tone, and the warm orange daytime hues work well for the eyes...

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The red dress for romantic comedies is definitely a stretch as others have mentioned. I see Resident Evil in there... I for one had no idea it was a romantic comedy.

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@Claire: There are TONS of movies from the 70s and 80s with head-in-the-cloud posters...Titanic is a late bloomer compared to those.

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Hey, you forgot the raunchy comedy, through the woman's legs shot

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In some ways it points out the graphic designer's dilemma-how to create a compelling poster for a formulaic product without resorting to an existing formula the client obviously likes. If someone manages to break through this bottleneck, they should be rewarded for their courage, salesmanship, and creativity.

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BUT many of these are not romantic comedies! Far From Heaven, All About My Mother, Cat People, Red. You're stretching it more than a bit.

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Great list. From now on I will pay more attention to the movie posters.

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I thought for sure there would be a separate page for the dramatically-lighted-person-with-gun-held-pointing-up-next-to-cheek cliche`.

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"Red" is hardly a romantic comedy.

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Not only are some of these poster look alike, some of the plots are also. Originality is few and far between in not only the film industry, but also in many of the fictional literature. It's like once they get a formula, they just change some of the ingredients to make it slightly different.

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I should probably bookmark this for future reference.

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Prince of persia features in two different types - this one and the previous one. Does that mean two different things are being said about the same movie?

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How about the millions of boring, hand drawn, quirky indie comedy posters? I guess it's all brand product association. You know what you're in for.

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#10 should include "Titanic," which basically invented the heads-in-clouds-over-the-ocean technique.

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tom cruise rarely is shown smiling head on in photos, otherwise everyone points out his "center tooth" http://babyhatchetblog.wordpress.com/2006/09/20/whats-wrong-with-tom-cruises-smile/

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pretty much any Nicolas Cage film.

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