What Happened To The Art Of Movie Poster Design: The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

First of all, forgive the awkward title of this post. It's supposed to be "What Happened To The Art Of Movie Poster Design: The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard." Apparently the wonderful Blogger interface puts a limit on title length, so the last two words got cut off. There doesn't appear to be anything I can do about it.

It's been a while since we've played "What Happened To The Art Of Movie Poster Design" here at Bob Canada's BlogWorld. There's a good reason for that— thanks to the current world-ending pandemic (which isn't over yet!), there ain't been any new movies or accompanying posters released for a good four months.

This week we finally got a glimpse of a new one though, and boy is it a doozie!

There was a time when movie posters featured top-notch illustration and graphic design, created by the finest artists in the field. Sadly, those days are gone forever, replaced by a squad of lowly interns and first year art students armed with a pirated copy of Photoshop.

Today's posters are generally little more than photo collages or screen grabs with the film's logo hastily slapped at the bottom.

Which leads us to today's subject— The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard.

First things first though, before we get to the so-called design. This film is a sequel to the , tepid 2017 action/comedy The Hitman's Bodyguard, starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson. 

I was surprised to see the film was getting a sequel. Surely no one out there was clamoring for a follow-up to this anemic outing? Welp, maybe they were. A quick trip over to BoxOfficMojo reveals that the original film grossed an astonishing $176 million worldwide, against its minuscule $30 million budget. That's a decent return in any accountant's book, making a sequel inevitable. 

OK, on with the poster for the new film. Holy crap! Look at that butt-ugly thing! Obviously all the actual designers are on lockdown and unable to work from home for some reason, so the studio handed the job over to their unpaid intern.

Where do I even begin? How about with the oddly washed out and desaturated colors? THAT'LL catch the eye of moviegoers in the lobby! 

And then there's the strange "triple vision" effect, which looks like the intern was playing around with various Photoshop filters to see what each one did.

The highlight of the poster though has to be Selma Hayek's arms. I get that they were trying to do a foreshortening effect, to make it look like she's pointing her guns at the viewer. It didn't work. It looks like if she put her freakishly short arms down at her sides, her hands would be just about even with her waist! Eww...

Good job centering her huge rack in the middle of the poster though, so the viewer's eye is drawn right toward them. I'm assuming a guy designed this thing.

Also, note how the names at the top don't line up with the figures below them. You know what that means! Somebody had a dispute about top billing! Whenever that happens, the studio mixes up the names so it's impossible to tell just who's listed first.

One last thing about this gawd-awful poster before I go— we're apparently at the point now where we can say "batshit" on a movie poster that'll be seen in theater lobbies across the country. We're very near the end of civilization.