This Week In Movie Posters, June 18th 2024

Deadpool and Wolverine, June Squibb, Twisters, and the uncanceling of Casey Affleck.

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Disney

Did you guys hear? Inside Out 2 saved the box office. It blew its own tracking projections out of the water and ended up grossing $155 million, the second best animated opening ever. It sold the most tickets of any movie since Barbie last year. Complicated feelings for me.

Astute readers will note that once upon a time, I almost got fired for giving the first Inside Out a C+ review (or such was the rumor, I could never get a straight answer about what they were really mad about). Mostly I think some Disney ad reps (who I’m pretty sure didn’t even advertise with us at the time anyway) were pissed that I’d ruined its 100% recommended rating on RottenTomatoes. Something I had no idea I was even doing at the time, but that they must’ve had a campaign built around it. Sorry for doing my job, I guess! (Pete Hammond? Still fully employed. Tells you everything you need to know about the business of “film criticism”).

Anyway, the Inside Out sequel is only tracking at 91% recommended, and not because of anything I did, I still haven’t seen it. I’m not sure whether I should. It sort of looks like a watered down Turning Red (which was great), in the same way that Elemental (one of the only Pixar movies that actually gets worse every time I watch it, in the age of constant toddler-dad rewatches — I’ve come to much greater appreciation for Luca, The Good Dinosaur, and Brave…) is a watered down Zootopia (still one of my favorites). I was childless and unmarried when I saw Inside Out, but now that I’m a dad I still don’t think it’s a great movie. It’s a message in search of a story. My kid has never asked to watch it.

I’m clearly not the target audience for this new one, so if I do see it, it will be mostly out of morbid curiosity/duty/inside joke purposes. Maybe seeing it will bring me closure? I do like that they just called it “Inside Out 2.” Numbers in sequel titles is a refreshing throwback.

This Week In Movie Posters

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

I’m a little too young for the Brat Pack (imagine that!), so mostly this poster just makes me think of sausages. Shouldn’t one of those words have an umlaut or something to differentiate it?

Anyway, I wasn’t interested in this movie until I realized Andrew McCarthy directed it. Did “brat” mean something different in the eighties? Everything about this suggests that they took the term as some huge slander and not just as an irreverent, British tabloid columnist way to call someone “young.” Weren’t Spielberg, Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, etc. also called “brats?” To put it in terms that an eighties person would understand: lighten up, Francis.

Bang Bang. That’s what you’re going to want to do after seeing Tim Blake Nelson all sexed up in this movie. Helluva bod for a 60-year-old man. He’s wiry!

I feel like Tim Blake Nelson has been on the cusp of becoming the “it character actor” for 30 years now. Or maybe he already is? Did Tim Blake Nelson already happen, is he about to happen, or is he currently happening? Whatever, I’ll see it. He’s good.

Here’s a French poster for Deadpool & Wolverine, which reimagines them as Disney princesses or whatever (which would’ve been a joke in the original Deadpool, but now that Disney is actually producing these, it’s… less of a joke? I dunno). I like the falling bullets mimicking the non-diagetic sparks that are in every action movie poster nowadays. Nice design, even if the whole bromance motif kind of feels like a relic from the early 2010s.

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck?? This feels maybe too much Boston to handle the day after the Celtics win a championship. The Instigatah! Ay, quit ya instagatin! What ah you, queah?

Anyway, what do you think they were instigating? I’m guessing race riot.

Hey, remember Lady Bird? Remember Pen15? Marketing for this one (Dídi) feels a little on the nose, but I do love those other ones so why not. Do you think he’ll chafe against his strict, first-generation Chinese upbringing, but eventually come to see his parents as people?

In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom. [IMDB]

His family can’t teach him that? If there’s one thing I feel like everyone knows, it’s how to love your mom.

SPEAK NO EVIL. Am I crazy or have they already made this movie seven times? Wasn’t that Sandra Bullock one basically this? Wait, no, she was blindfolded in that. Different monkey reference. Still, same deal! And wasn’t there The Quiet Place? That was this! And they made three of them!

I don’t know who James Watkins is, but this looks like A Quiet Place meets the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. Tell me this doesn’t look like a Shyamalan joint. You can’t!

By the way, there are a LOT of Shyamalan fanatics online. You absolute do not want to stir up a hive of them. They inhabit a parallel universe where up is down, down is up, and Lady in the Water is good. Nothing makes sense there! Never bumble into Shyamalania!

Somehow the picture quality on this mimics that of a text or email forward sent by its target audience.

I do like the kitty in the O though. Sucker for a good kitty picture.

One of my last reviews for Uproxx was 80 for Brady, which was a surreal movie that gave the distinct impression that none of the stars were ever actually in the same room with each other at the same time during filming (which actually made the movie more interesting than it should’ve been). This poster is giving a similar vibe.

Glen Powell! He’s everywhere! And Daisy Edgar-Jones! I wonder if those tornadoes are going to blow her bangs out of her face. Her bangs are always in her goddamned face. Maybe she should replace Tim Blake Nelson in Bang Bang. Or star in its sequel, Bangs Bangs. Hey, the format worked for Twister.

I don’t know why we needed the diagonal horizon line in the poster. No one falls for the whole “shaking the camera around creates emotional tension” thing anymore. I do like that they thought they needed a whole special font for Jurassic World though. Like we can only recognize Jurassic World if it’s in the Jurassic World font.

Why does this feel like an ad for body wash?

Smile 2! Can you believe they made a Smile 2? Part of me wants to see this, but I haven’t seen Smile 1 and I feel like I’d be lost. Do you think the poster designer was pissed that “why so serious?” was already taken? That’s not Kristen Stewart, by the way, stop asking.

“Hey, you guys like weird shit, right? Come see this knew Yorgos movie, it’s weird as shit.”

You son of a bitch. I’m in.

I can’t actually read half those names down there (what is this, an eye chart?), but I caught Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, and Jesse P. Lemons. What else do you need?

Here’s the poster for Space Cadet. Or as I like to call it, “Stratospherically Blonde.” (Cosmically Blonde? Whatever, it’s Legally Blonde in space. You get it).

“Poppy Liu,” huh? Sure, whatever.

I only really know Kneecap through Instagram and I don’t remember how that happened. And now I am straight amped for the Kneecap movie (is this just 8 Mile in Gaelic? I hope so). Is that genuine or was I just incepted by the algorithm?. Hard to say, more news as it develops.

Gotta love Neon. I love being dommed by a poster. I love a poster that negs me. I love a poster that says “Oh, you haven’t heard of this movie yet? You should probably google it before everyone finds out and thinks you’re a loser.”

In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree. [IMDB]

Apparently it has Nic Cage in it too. It’s pretty great that they didn’t sell it by shouting “THIS MOVIE HAS NIC CAGE IN IT” like every other Nic Cage movie these days.

I like that the idea that the giant image of Kevin Costner in a cowboy hat and mustache shooting a repeating rifle at the top didn’t read “cowboy” enough. And so someone was like, “Wait, how are people going to know he rides a horse??” and then they had to add a whole other image of Kevin Costner riding a horse at the bottom.

Holy shit, I just caught that this will be a two-parter. Chapter one in June, chapter two in August. The Boomers are wild, man. They absolutely cannot get enough Kevin Costner riding a horse.

“A little bear goes a long way.” Typically excellent tagline for a Paddington movie. I still don’t know how they got away with staging Peru origin stories in both Paddington and Paddington 2, but somehow it worked. In that sense, it does sort of follow to set a sequel entirely in Peru. Though these movies are so thoroughly about the concept of Britishness that I wonder if it will still work in a different setting. Also, it has a different director. But! Also Olivia Colman, our greatest living actress.

Hey, did you guys know June Squibb is a real kick in the pants? It’s true. Total firecracker. She’s something else! See those guns on the bottom? Those are there to convey that June Squibb is a real pistol!

Fine, I’ll post the trailer. In a world where people still hear about new movies, I feel like we would’ve heard more about this one. (Richard Roundtree??)

This feels like someone said “what if we remade The Beekeeper as a Sundance comedy?”