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On top of two trailers, Sony Pictures released a new poster for Spider-Man: Homecoming today and we have a couple of questions after seeing it.
The poster (below) shows several characters appearing in the movie. There’s the main baddie, Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) his alter ego, the Vulture. Peter Parker is in the middle of the poster and his superhero form dominates the upper left. Iron Man is flying away from the Manhattan skyline at the bottom of the poster while Tony Stark watches over the rest of the cast in the top right corner.
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Why Marvel needed to include the costumed and un-costumed versions of the three main characters is unclear. The result is a busy poster that comes across like a poor Photoshop job.
The reception to the poster has been unanimously negative, with many people offering their own versions of the poster, adding they couldn’t possibly make it any worse. Others have suggested alternatives. Such as:
I'll be honest: I tried to improve the very busy SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING poster, and I no longer know where the original ends and mine begins pic.twitter.com/Sazywe9gwh
— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) May 24, 2017
Marvel and Sony could've just recreated this for the Homecoming poster and called it a day pic.twitter.com/jCJyi2XoGr
— Ira Madison III (@ira) May 24, 2017
A poster is not indicative of a film’s quality, of course. Both trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming look promising and Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman was so taken aback by Tom Holland’s performance that the studio altered the entire direction of its Uncharted live-action adaptation to include the young actor.
There have also been multiple examples of good movies — even great movies — that have been accompanied by poor posters. X-Men: First Class had a pretty terrible poster, which can be seen below, but was widely seen as one of the best X-Men movies when it was released in 2011. Bill Murray and Andy MacDowell’s 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, was also the victim of a terrible poster design. Much like First Class, however, the movie is widely regarded as one of the best comedies of all time — poster be damned.
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Spider-Man: Homecoming has also had a couple of great posters, including the first one of the teen superhero just lazying around, the Manhattan skyline in the background. When that poster was released, it received a ton of praise from both critics and fans, and set the tone for what to expect out of the movie.
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Spider-Man: Homecoming will be released on July 7.
