Film Preview: Inferno (2016)

Page Revisions:

(May 15, 2016) Original
(June 26, 2016) New Trailer (#2)
(October 23, 2016) New Posters (#3-#15)

Release Date:

October 28, 2016

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “When Robert Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Dr. Sienna Brooks, and together they must race across Europe against the clock to foil a deadly global plot.”

Poster Rating: C / C / B / C / C- / D / C / D / C- / C (6)

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Review: (#1) This mindbending poster design certainly plays into the puzzling elements of the first two books/films and the figure at the top being different than the inverse figures at the bottom is interesting, but it’s so dull through the center that it loses some of its richness. (#2) Sometimes, all you need to sell a film is a single actor. The background image is visually interesting and ties best into the film’s premise, but the poster is rather lifeless otherwise. Even Tom Hanks seems unenthused.

(#3) An interesting and beautiful look into one of the locales of the film. It has action elements and visual richness, making it a solid design, at least if the two leads weren’t over-enhanced with Photoshop. (#4) The same action poses as before, but less compelling details and no visual grace. (#5) More of the same action poses, this time with dull detail anemic background and the inverted city trope that doesn’t work well in this instance.

(#6) Tri-panel posters don’t always work. This is especially true when your lead actor appears in two of them, one using the absurdly unrealistic smooth face of prior designs put next to the less unrealistic smoothness of the other face. (#7) More akin to the first design, this one works in similar respects, though the detailed spiral motif doesn’t feel appropriate. (#8) You would think that Tom Hanks had had a facelift by these myriad designs. Not only is it as dreadful as past incarnations, the utter blandness of the background detracts from the black-and-white style.

(#9) This use of the inverted city motif works better as you can better see the details and it uses colors that aren’t common for this type of design. Hanks is given a grainy quality, which helps mask the poor Photoshop job of prior outings. (#10-#15) These character posters vary only minimally and use the spiral design as a backdrop doesn’t look very good. That they just zoomed in and out from that image for each background swap diminishes their impact.

Trailer Rating: C+ / C+

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Review: (#1) What fascinated the audience about the first two films was the intricate way the puzzles played out. This trailer hints at more puzzles being involved, but it mostly plays out like an action thriller that lacks humanity.

(#2) While the first trailer suggests puzzles galore, this trailer marginalizes them. It suggests there’s nothing more than a standard action thriller with a familiar face and a familiar setting. There are some interesting elements in the trailer, but overall it’s as frustratingly lacking in details as the prior trailer.