This Week In Movie Posters, July 31st

Napoleon! Wonka! Jason Statham crashing a shark into an octopus! It's the week's best and worst posters.

Forgive me, piggies, for I have sinned. It has been too long since my last This Week In Posters. As my penance, I shall now describe two weeks worth of posters and say 25 Hail Stathams.

Welcome to This Week In Movie Posters, the weekly(ish) feature in which I present all of the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them.

This is a new poster for Red, White, and Royal Blue, a gay teen(ish?) rom-fic adaptation about a love story between the First Son and the Prince of England. I like that the poster doesn’t leave the gay content to the imagination. There’s something so much gayer about interlaced-finger hand holding than any sex act. It’s so gay that it manages to convert even a pinky ring, the most heterosexual male accessory.

This is… well, it’s definitely a horror movie, isn’t it. Blood gets red at the bottom. Or maybe that’s magma? No, no, magma is hotter down below, then cools as it gets to the surface. Maybe blood is the reverse of magma? Anyway, I’m glad we could go on this journey together. I’m probably not going to see this.

This is the new poster for Disney’s Haunted Mansion. Last time I made fun of this movie, a few readers reminded me that there was already a Haunted Mansion movie, starring Eddie Murphy and released in 2003. I didn’t remember that one, but in my defense, almost no one does. So if you’re keeping score at home, that’s two movie adaptations based on a Disney “ride” about a haunted house. Never believe the studio execs when they say they don’t have the money to pay their writers and actors, they had enough money to bankroll two of these.

As for the poster, I don’t know that I would’ve tried to mimic the hologram technology from the ride, built in (*quick Google search*) 1969, but… well, it’s certainly a choice.

Here’s the new poster for Disney’s Wish. I’m torn because I love that they’re going back to 2-D animation, but I hate the vague, one-word title trend (Tangled, Brave, Soul…).

Also, what are those bubbles??

IMDB says:

Wish will follow a young girl named Asha who wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her.

A trouble-making star? Huh, not where I saw that one going, to be honest. I guess the bubbles are like… wishes? I don’t know.

Poor Kenneth Branagh had his last Agathie Christie movie (Death On The Nile), which cost $90 million to make, basically torpedoed by the one-two punch of COVID and Armie Hammer’s ongoing sex scandals. Under the circumstances, it seems nice of the studio to let him still make the sequel anyway. Armie Hammer is gone now, of course, but it’s cool that the studio was apparently like, “The double mustache? No, man, we’re totally still behind, let’s run it back.”

Zany murder mysteries are as enjoyable as root canals to me, am I crazy? I think my general rule is that the more complicated the plot, the more likely it is to suck. Deep Water? Fantastic. Glass Onion? Excruciating.

“Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose?” Hmm, I love Simon Pegg, but I’m suspicious of a title this quirky. It’s like when a stand-up comedian comes out and they’re dressed ridiculously.

I’m only going to IMDB for this one out of sheer curiosity:

In 1935, Hungarian-American para-psychologist Nandor Fodor began his investigation of a strange occurrence on the Isle of Man. An average British family, the Irvings, claimed to have been contacted by a mysterious entity at their farm. A talking mongoose. Named Gef (Pronounced "Jeff".)

Hmm. Okay, this is a weird observation I’ve never had before now, but I would definitely be rolling my eyes if this was based on a popular YA novel. The fact that it came from an original script has me weirdly intrigued. In order for an idea this weird with no basis in proven IP to get made, that script must’ve really impressed some important people (which is hard to do, as important people never read, especially in Hollywood). The director doesn’t even seem to be related to a famous person! Very interesting.

They should start putting that on the poster. “No nepo babies were consulted in the production of this film.”

Guns, girls, sunglasses, vests with no shirt on underneath — the American dream! I don’t know what “A-Town” is, but it looks fun. Do you guys know what “A-Town” is? Seems like they could’ve given us a hint.

According to IMDB it’s… Atlanta? Hold on, I thought Atlanta was the ATL! You guys don’t get to have this many nicknames.

This poster for Puppy Love is a great example of what a good tagline can do. Without “one bone could change everything,” this is a poster for a low-budget looking, made-for-TV rom-com about dogs with the two actors just sort of ham-handedly photoshopped sideways. But you throw a headline like that in there and suddenly I’m wondering about all the different sex combinations between the actors and dogs it might imply. Every TV rom-com should tease possible bestiality.

“Who is the real threat?” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s humans. It’s the humans, right?

What a great poster. Not because the imagery is so strong, or because of the way it works the title into the graphic, or the little saliva rope attached to the teeth — which are all great — but because of the implication that the most terrifying Saw torture of all would be to have someone forcing your eyes to gross. Gaahhhh I can’t see the magic eye poster image noooooo…

Love that spittle rope. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? That being said, I think we need to decide once and for all on a way to determine whether an X in a title is meant to be pronounced as the letter X or as the number ten. I can’t live with this kind of uncertainty. I can’t have Saw X (ten?) sharing space with Elon Musks’s X (X) app on my iPhone X (ten). I’d rather stay home and watch ten-rated movies.

Look at that facial expression. She’s trying to express love and devotion but he’s not present all. His mind is off somewhere else. Off somewhere… dreamin’. Dreamin… wild.

I had to look this up, but I guess it’s about Donnie and Joe Emerson. I didn’t know who they were, so I can’t judge whether Casey Affleck is uncanceled now or if this is just the kind of under-the-radar biopic that is the best a canceled Oscar winner can expect to star in.

(Yes, I know Casey Affleck was in Oppenheimer. You’re not allowed to bring that up unless you know his character’s name off the top of your head.).

Speaking of canceled actors, there’s… well, whatever Amber Heard is considered now. More employable than Johnny Depp, presumably. Anyway, this is a cool poster, because you look at the top half and think “ah, an understated period piece about love and yearning probably directed by a European.” But then you scroll down, and surprise! It’s actually about a kid possessed by the devil. “Dark Brandon,” I believe is his name.

Dammit, Dark Brandon! Stop making the priest catch fire!

I can’t look at this poster and not see the screaming cowboy meme. Why is Dennis Quaid’s head superimposed into the heavens? Why is it so much bigger than anything else in the poster? Is that head so big because he had to… fit the dreams in there? Why is that kid wearing a wifebeater (are they called something else now?)? Why is he standing on the roof of a car? Why is he doing a French tuck and wearing mismatched shoes? And what does it have to do with giving up hope?

Mysteries abound. Not necessarily intriguing ones, but mysteries nonetheless.

Men only want one thing and it’s Joaquin Phoenix playing a sad Napoleon in a Ridley Scott movie. I’m not going to lie, I am totally amped for this one. To a Dad Movie Enthusiast™ such as myself, the existence of a Joaquin Phoenix Napoleon movie almost makes up for the lack of Master and Commander sequels. The battlefields are now battlefields!

Great poster too. I like how he’s making his weird shoulder seem like an artistic choice. I just hope no one gets canceled before the release.

From Variety yesterday:

Joaquin Phoenix: “[Vanessa Kirby] said, ‘Look, whatever you feel, you can do.’ I said, ‘Same with you.’ She said, ‘You can slap me, grab me, you can pull me, you can kiss me, whatever.' We had this agreement that we were going to surprise each other."

I love actors. Also, “Slap Me, Grab Me, Pull Me, Kiss Me” is my favorite U2 album.

Exorcist Believer is, surprisingly, not a re-release.

The Exorcist: Believer is an upcoming American supernatural horror film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Peter Sattler and Green from a story by Scott Teems, Danny McBride and Green. It is the sixth installment in The Exorcist franchise, and will serve as a direct sequel to The Exorcist (1973).

It’s pretty wild that Danny McBride and David Gordon Green are doing half ridiculous comedies about farts and cum and half loving homages to 70s horror movies now. As I’ve said, comedy guys should do all the horror movies and horror guys should do all the superhero movies. Remember I said that. (If it’s good, I mean. If it’s bad forget I said that).

Gran Turismo is a movie about a videogamer who becomes a racecar driver, and boy do those look like the legs of a gamer. Those legs were made for sittin’.

Sidenote: This is probably going to be good, right? Car racing movies are almost always good. I don’t know if there’s a bigger gulf between how good movies about a thing are vs how good that thing is in real life than car racing.

Whoa, breaking glass, but stylized! This looks like it came from that “Eddie Van Halen’s signature guitar” school of graphic design. Grrr, Futurism!

I like Morgan Freeman’s facial expression though. It feels like he’s as skeptical about the idea of Josh Hutcherson as an action star as I am. Remember in Hunger Games when he used his skills as a baker to disguise himself as a tree? I’m never going to stop bringing that up.

See, now THIS is how you combine a series of seeming non-sequiturs into something intriguing. Caleb Landry Jones? As a drag queen? In a wheelchair? With a roomful of dogs? And maybe he’s a superhero? Directed by the guy who did The Fifth Element? Yes, you have my attention.

I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever seen a poster with this many people on it where every single one of them looked like their heads were Photoshopped on at a strange angle. I worried AI might rob us of Photoshop this bad. I’m pleased to see that it still happens (also, credit where credit is due, at least Nia Vardalos and John Corbett’s faces and names match up).

That lady has an arm with a baked good growing out of her shoulder! Joey Fatone couldn’t be happier about it. Loves just being included, that guy.

All in all… kudos. This poster gives me the exact kind of uncanny valley sensation that this entire franchise always has.

Big explosion! Dudes you remember! That’s the Expendables, baby! And now they’re all back for the Expend-4-bles. Hey, man, if I wanted to expend four bulls I’d call your mom, am I right???

Tagline: “Old blood meets new blood.”

I like that the “new blood” is Andy Garcia. They should do a promotion where if you can pick his face out of this lineup you get to see the movie for free.

I had to look up this guy on the left, because he looks like the guy they’d cast to play Timothee Chalamet in a biopic and I felt like I recognized him from somewhere. Turns out it’s Tanner Buchanan, from Cobra Kai, just with a different haircut. I actually like this haircut better, no one has ever looked more like a guy named “Tanner Buchanan” than this guy. Baywatch ass name.

Speaking of Timothee Chalamet! I swear I didn’t plan it like this. But here he is, in, and I kid you not about this, a prequel for Willy Wonka. Called Wonka. About a Young Willy Wonka Who Fucks.

Tagline: Discover how Willy became… WONKA.

Did we not learn our lesson from Pan? How many times are we going to attempt this same origin story thing? Here’s the trailer, because why not:

It’s wild to me that they didn’t stick a slowed-down dramatic cover of “Pure Imagination” in it, considering how on the nose everything else about it is. Then again, Ready Player One already did that.

It’s hard to overstate how terrible of an idea this seems to be. Willy Wonka’s whole thing was never being able to tell whether or how serious he was being. Timothee Chalamet’s whole thing is being intensely earnest. That, uh, seems like a weird fit! But I guess we’ll get to learn how he became a great chocolatier. I’m guessing it’s about who you know.

It’s pretty ballsy to just take a title from an already well-known movie. That’s right, this Inside Man is not a remake of that other Inside Man, directed by Spike Lee. In fact, it seems they actually changed the title to Inside Man, it used to be called The Gemini Lounge. Baffling. It seems that guy in the bottom right is the director, who also stars. He looks like the director too. It’s sort of like when you’re watching one of those faith-based movies and a guy shows up with a face so uncanny that you instantly think “Oh, this guy must be the director,” and it’s either the director or some famous megachurch pastor guy who bankrolled it. Now that I’m typing it I’m realizing I might be the only one reading this who has had this experience. Still applicable though! I guess you’ll just have to trust me!

We’re still doing these? Ugh. And don’t you try tempting me with cats, it’s not going to work.

And finally, here’s Jason Statham, escaping a giant shark, possibly into the orifice of a giant octopus. “Oi, it’s loike oy’s goin outta da froyin pan inta da foiyah, ain’t oy, Tommy? Dat is, if da foiyah was a gioyant focken squid, ain’t oy.”

This movie looks like the purest form of movie. I can’t wait.