Posterizing: The ‘Ghosts’ That Weren’t

This is a sad edition of Posterizing, everyone. Just know that inside I will lament about being so close to purchasing one of the coolest Mondo posters I’ve ever seen. I guess the new ‘Bourne’ poster should cheer me up, but it doesn’t.

‘The Bourne Legacy’

This is almost the equivalent of the studio saying, “How come you didn’t get it?” See, most people wondered how we could have a new ‘Bourne’ movie without Matt Damon. It seemed a ridiculous notion. That is, until this poster so blatantly pointed out how stupid we were. “There was never just one,” it boldly states. Graciously, the studio they left off the “Duh!” that’s being insinuated.

‘Conception’

To be completely up front about this movie, I’ve never heard of it and have no idea what it’s about. While I despise the giant lists of names the middle, I do however think the sperm breaking into the “O” is a nice touch for something called ‘Conception’. I’d never hang it on my wall, but it caught my eye.

‘Twixt’

Here’s another movie I had no idea existed until I saw the poster. It’s a pretty generic image, but young, sweet Elle Fanning scares me. On the other hand, this poster gets a few negative points because nowhere on here do we see what physical version of Val Kilmer we’re getting, slightly pudgy or morbidly obese. I’ve got to know!

‘John Dies at the End’

I saw this at Sundance, and let me tell you that this bat pictured in the poster has all of ten seconds of screen time, if that. That’s okay, because any bat covered in ripped Bible pages and run through with tetanus-infected nails is pretty cool in my book. Honestly, the bat is used for one joke. Don’t get your hopes up that you’ll see it used on any bad guys.

‘Lonesome Ghosts’

Many of you who love poster art may know of the original Mondo movie posters, which sell out at lightning speed whenever they go on sale. I’ve been a fan of Tom Whalen’s art for a long time, and the Disney series that he’s been doing for the site is out-of-this-world awesome. When this ‘Lonesome Ghosts’ movie poster appeared for sale, I tried my best to buy it. I got all the way to the end of checkout, hit the Finalize button, and… out of stock! Despair. I wanted one badly! Forty-five bucks for one of those would’ve been nothing. They’re probably selling for well over $300 on eBay right now. Damn!

6 comments

  1. I saw an extended teaser/trailer for Twixt over half a year ago, with lots of Val Kilmer footage. Let’s just say he’s not morbidly obese, but … well, more than pudgy. A far cry from his ‘The Saint’ days.

  2. JM

    ‘The Bourne Legacy’ just pulled a ‘Zelda II: The Adventure of Link’ where they reveal the first one was just a small part of a larger Hyrule.

    But it’s not quite as sexy as the Tom Cruise-in-a-Hoodie MI4 poster.

    Salt, Bond, Bourne, et al. This is not a good genre for posters. Perhaps it’s meta. The genericness of the poster reflects the genericness of the plot?

    ‘The Raid: Redemption’ poster hurt the most. Sony Pictures Classics stripped away all the classy, and replaced it with bullshit.

    • Aaron Peck
      Author

      That new ‘Raid’ poster is in my next Posterizing column. It’s really bad. It looks like a cartoon.

      Plus, what the hell did they add a subtitle to it for? When did they put ‘Redemption’ in there? It honestly makes little sense to stick a subtitle on the movie in the first place not to mention the fact that “redemption” has absolutely nothing to do with the movie as a whole.

      • JM

        Sony already branded the sequel, ‘The Raid: Retaliation.’

        Gareth Evans’s sequel title is ‘Berandal,’ the Indonesian word for thug.

        Apparently the Hollywood remake gets the original title, ‘The Raid.’

  3. EM

    I’m sure it says something quite terrible about me that, having read Aaron’s discussion of the John Dies at the End poster, I scrolled down to look at the poster and got disappointed that the bat he referred to was not an animal.

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