10 Movies With Cool Posters and Bland DVD Covers
As an avid DVD collector, I have a real soft spot for creative and well-designed DVD packaging. In the digital age, it’s true that physical media is becoming almost irrelevant, but I still think the visual artwork that accompanies a film is crucial, not just in selling a movie, but also in how we think about a movie too. It may seem silly or trivial, but DVD covers and movie posters affect how we feel about a film, both before and after we watch it.
Needless to say, it annoys me when studios don’t put any effort into DVD artwork. It especially annoys me when the movie has a beautiful, thought-provoking poster, and then somehow the DVD ends up looking like some shitty fan-made Photoshop job. In a lot of cases this happens because the studios believe that the stars sell the film, so they simply slap a bunch of massive head shots on the cover and call it a day. I’m not disagreeing that stars can help sell a movie, but I think that a slick, visually appealing piece of art (with the stars names on it) is much more likely to make a DVD jump off the store shelves. (Don’t even get me started about the ugly additional French language titles required on DVD packages in Canada!)
To further illustrate my point, I’ve attached 10 great movie posters with the corresponding sub par DVD artwork. Now I’m no graphic design guru, but how many of these DVD covers actually tell you anything about the movie? Do you prefer the DVD artwork over the posters? I’ve seen plenty more offenders out there, so feel free to chime in with some of your own disgraceful DVD hack jobs. Images after the jump.
Comments (26)
Recent offenders are X3, Superman Returns, and The Star Wars Reissues. All look like high school Photoshop homework. Why not just use the theatrical posters? For the most part those are good images, and they are already made. It is a sad state when fan art can easily outshine the real deal.
Posted by Chip Chief on January 2nd, 2007http://www.nohayrosasinespina.com/imagenes/full/c_scanner_darkly_poster.jpg
i think the original Scanner Darkly poster is much better than the DVD cover.
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000JMK6LW.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V33698900_.jpg
I’m surprised a couple recent releases kept their movie poster art - Snakes on a Plane and Devil Wears Prada had decent posters and they left them unchanged for DVD.
http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie-gallery/albums/userpics/GoodNightAndGoodLuckPoster.jpg
Good Night and Good Luck was another victim. the US dvds kept this design.
http://imagesource.allposters.com/images/pic/113/003_THEMANWHOS~The-Man-Who-Wasn-t-There-Posters.jpg
Posted by Goon on January 2nd, 2007likewise, The Man Who Wasnt There cover was not as well designed in the Canadian release, compared to this poster.
“Don’t even get me started about the ugly additional French language titles required on DVD packages in Canada!”
I’ll second that!
Posted by Aaron Moore on January 3rd, 2007I was actually going to include The Man Who Wasn’t There in my list, but I couldn’t find a single image of the terrible Canadian DVD cover anywhere on the web. It’s almost as if it never existed… except for the fact that I still have it sitting on my DVD shelf right now.
Posted by Sean on January 3rd, 2007I can’t help but laugh when I see that grey Inside Man poster.
On the danish cover, the critic quote reads “A delightful coup-comedy!”, which I think is quite funny.
Other than that I think alot of the original ones you picked has big faces as well. I don’t really see how the Minority Report, Out of Sight and Gattaca ones are really that original.
The Lord of War original one is amazing though. I can’t appreciate my DVD now that I’ve seen that.
Posted by Henrik on January 3rd, 2007I can see how the Minority Report might not look like anything special, but I think it’s one of my favourite movie posters. The eye is a central image in the movie, and compared to the boring “Tom Cruise turned sideways” pose, I think it says a lot more about the flick. Also, in this case I’m saying, the original poster already has Tom Cruise’s face on it, why change it?
As for Gattaca, I agree that the poster isn’t the greatest… I picked it more because the DVD is so terrible. To be fair, there are other DVD releases of the movie that use an image similar to the poster.
I still think the Out of Sight poster is way better than the DVD though.
Posted by Sean on January 3rd, 2007The Prestige has to take the prize as the worst. It’s just awful.
Posted by Croft on January 3rd, 2007The Star Wars DVD covers. They are terrible!
Posted by Thos on January 3rd, 2007God, that Confessions of a Dangerous Mind cover IS horrible. I’m glad that here where I live it, as well as Gattaca, has actually got the original poster picture as the DVD cover.
David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence recently received a horrible DVD cover treatment in R1.
Posted by Vili Maunula on January 3rd, 2007Sean, on Minority Report: what you either forgot, or did not know, was that the DVD cover WAS the original poster. The poster you site as “the original” was in fact the teaser poster.
By the way, my four of infamy:
1) The Hulk [not much of a change, but real significant]
2) Quigley Down Under
3) Lair Of The White Woorm
4) Streets Of Fire (DVD re-issue)
It should be also said that some original art could be kept for SEs and/or different versions of a film (such as widescreen and full frame).
Finally, I hope that cover art for The Prestige is changed soon. How dreadful!
Posted by Darren J Seeley on January 3rd, 2007I wasn’t sure but I do kind of remember seeing a poster for Minority Report that looked like the DVD cover. Didn’t realize the eye one was only the teaser poster though.
You bring up a good point about the Special Editions versus barebones editions of movies. Munich is a good example of this, and normally I’d say it’s a reasonable compromise to keep the cool artwork for the collector’s edition and the shitty headshots for the barebones rental version. The problem with the Munich SE is that’s it’s pretty much impossible to find anywhere!
Posted by Sean on January 3rd, 2007My Vote goes to Donnie Darko. The only reason I watched it in the first place was because the poster looked so damn cool. But when they released the Theatrical ver. on DVD. They put those stupid faces on the side. Which didn’t make any sense because they were in the image of frank.
And the Directors cut is just awful. Clearly capitalizing on the popularity of Jake Gyllenhall.
Posted by The man on January 4th, 2007“Clearly capitalizing on the popularity of Jake Gyllenhall.” - well, he is the star… if they had centered on Drew Barrymore you’d have a point.
in the case of the first version on DVD, i pulled out the slip from the inside and put it over the other cover.
I thought of another one today:
24 Hour Party People on DVD - http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00007BK2N.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1056756295_.jpg
http://www.impawards.com/2002/posters/twenty_four_hour_party_people.jpg isnt the best theatical poster ever but certainly kicks the shit out of that DVD cover.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f135/tuxedomoon/24_hour_party_people.jpg is a little better
Posted by Goon on January 4th, 2007Soderberg’s “Ocean’s Eleven” is also up there as a terrible match-up.
Posted by tamara on January 9th, 2007Hey you know what, I actually had Ocean’s Eleven picked out but forgot to post the pictures. I’ll add them right now.
Posted by Sean on January 9th, 2007The Matador before:
http://cr0y.waffleimages.com/files/80/8034686538e75dbbcbca0cb390957f5b0c1cde2f.jpg
The Matador after:
Posted by Goon on February 27th, 2007http://waffles.wwwp.de/files/64/64ead1079a3bdd3ff39c47ade04f3673cdb62ef1.jpg
History of Violence before:
http://imagesocket.com/view/history11b2.jpg
History of Violence after:
Posted by Goon on February 27th, 2007http://imagesocket.com/view/history234b.jpg
Layer Cake
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0006HIPOK.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
which then got released here as:
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0009X7BDC.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
which isnt so bad, but THEN after Casino Royale made Daniel Craig a bigger star:
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0009X7BD2.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
UGH
Posted by Goon on March 1st, 2007crank had two wicked posters:
http://img.waffleimages.com/0cc96be94f0d2ee75e366d12ab635ab6f2628ea1/crank-poster.jpg
http://img.waffleimages.com/d82e27102d3e4bc6d6778f8a21982c8ec7b11598/crankposter.jpg.w300h441.jpg
and now it looks like this:
Posted by Goon on March 1st, 2007http://img.waffleimages.com/1cea30ab139b81413608053d1b37b3a58f55dcd7/B000K7UBSO.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Sean maybe you should add some of these man:
The Fountain before:
http://img.waffleimages.com/4af24af4fc7c1f008cdc6202b25a089ac2d0fada/fountain1.JPG
The Fountain coming soon to DVD:
Posted by Goon on March 11th, 2007http://img.waffleimages.com/ee1c7866115ef6f2a900caf55edac2b6c6376b9c/fountain3.JPG
I’ve always hated the artwork for the U.S. release of Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, which looks like something you’d find sketched in some junior high school student’s notebook.
http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/92/37/2722e893e7a0486cc728f010.L.jpg
Especially when compared to the original Japanese artwork, which was used for the DVD releases in other countries.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c1/Innocence_Ghost_In_The_Shell_Poster.jpg/200px-Innocence_Ghost_In_The_Shell_Poster.jpg
Posted by Jason on March 17th, 2007check out the awful UK cover of Children of Men. this takes the cake for awful dvd covers
http://img0703.paintedover.com/uploads/0703/childrenofmen_r2.jpg
Posted by Goon on March 28th, 2007heres one you’ll agree with Sean
Primer before:
http://img.waffleimages.com/1b36c4dba0b7e949153d4867e303df6d91f4cc9a/primer.jpg
Primer after:
Posted by Goon on March 28th, 2007http://img.waffleimages.com/8a6dd6a871d350dbde59d5312bea86e3ca7c686f/B0007N1JC8.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
It seems they’re all just trying to make sure you can see the big movie stars. So mom will be sure to rent it.
Posted by Cocktail Ken on April 27th, 2007A little off topic here, but since you’ve got the Minority report poster up there, I always thought it was rather funny how damn similar the Minority Report DVD cover is to the Mission Impossible 2 DVD cover. Both are just profile views of Tom Cruise kind of slanting into view from off camera.
Minority Report: http://feedbag.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/25/minority.jpg
Mission Impossible 2: http://www.impawards.com/2000/posters/mission_impossible_two_ver1.jpg
Posted by Rian on June 19th, 2008Leave a Reply