Film Preview: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Poster

Additional posters can be found below.

Trailer Link

Release Date:

April 4, 2014

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and battles a new threat from old history: the Soviet agent known as the Winter Soldier.”

Poster: C / B- / C+ (5) / C+ / C / C+ (3) / C / B / B- (6)

Review: A bloodied, damaged shield makes a nice teaser poster, but not much else. The second design, uses a burgeoning style choice to position the hero with his back to the audience preparing to do something particularly cool. This particular scene is played out in the trailer, which gives the poster some impact; but as a single design that people might view before seeing the trailer, it lacks a spark and doesn’t give the impression that our hero is about to jump.

(#3-#7) These five character posters don’t have the same origin, but they share similar design aesthetics. There have been many more clever designs for this type of film and for these type of character posters. It’s almost as if the studios really aren’t trying anymore.

(#8-#9) The similarities are many. The 9th poster seems to be the earlier design. Note the March 26 date. The eighth poster shows the film’s current release date of April 4. Being the newer design, the eighth makes our hero a more imposing figure, shrinking Black Widow and Nick Fury from their prior versions. It lightens up the design and gives it a more antiquated feel. Similarities and differences aside, the design is grade school-level artwork: derivative.

(#10-#14) We have three more character posters that fit the motif we discussed previously. These are followed by a design that is reminiscent of those, but without a character name posted at the top. The fourteenth design is a foreign mark-up of the primary poster for the series, thus lacks any originality of detail.

(#15-#21) The fifteenth is a unique period design that makes the franchise feel like it’s a part and parcel of the era from which Captain America came. The sixteenth through twenty-first designs are a compelling attempt to refashion the character designs that came previously, setting each to a stylized, distinct background that sets them apart from most other posters on the market.

Trailer: C+ / B

Review: I thought the Captain America movie was third best among the various pre-Avengers films, but it had a lot of compelling character development on display. With the fish-out-of-water aspect of the story, much of this new movie seems a bit stale and juicing it up with key figures of S.H.I.E.L.D., including Scarlett Johansson seems like a lack of confidence in the universality of the character. Add to all this the supposedly “cool” final scene of the trailer and you have a severely misguided attempt to create tension when there isn’t much.

(#2) Now we understand who our antagonist is. He’s still a bit shady, but that’s a good thing when you want to keep people curious. The film was going to have a high box office anyway, but with the massive amounts of action on display, it seems more likely to appeal to the broad demographic that The Avengers did and could be one of the franchise’s bigger performers.