Film Preview: The Batman (2021)

Film Poster

Page Revisions:

(August 30, 2020) Original
(October 24, 2021) New Trailer (#2) — New Posters (#3-#4) — New Release Date (changed from 10.1.2021)
(January 2, 2022) New Trailer (#3) — New Poster (#5)
(February 27, 2022) New Posters (#6-#23)

Release Date:

October 1, 2021

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “The plot is unknown.”

Poster Rating: C / C / C- / C- / C- / C / C / B- / C (4) / C+ / C- / C / C- / C (2) / C (4) / C

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) This two-color design lacks creative energy and zest, a dull teaser poster. (#2) A color-deprived comic cover that does no justice to the film itself.

(#3) This need to go black-and-red is far too overbearing, especially for a superhero film. We expect a bit of darkness, but nothing a film bloodily awash. (#4) Still a travesty in black-and-red, but it does a bitter job evoking the character than the prior design, but to little effect.

(#5) This is a dull design that uses the red-and-blue motif to create a dichotomy that’s not worth even acknowledging with the overly simplistic general design and background.

(#6) An unnecessary close up and a strangely cheap looking mask. (#7) Really nothing to this one, just to figures staring off into the distance. (#8) Bringing everything together, this design works better than it should, though it’s too monochromatic. (#9-#12) This quartet of character posters looks cheap. The same image seemingly painted onto each with no sense of style. (#13) This seems to want to draw inspiration of the series of Disney posters designed for China, but it doesn’t nearly the thematic heft nor the visual creativity of those designs. (#14) Nothing really to see here and yet another pointless design for IMAX. (#15) Whereas the IMAX design was lacking in detail. This Dolby one does much better going for creative energy even if the background and some of the lettering isn’t impressive. (#16) This looks more like a shitty 80s VHS cover than it does a serious movie poster design. (#17-#18) Designers want simplistic, but they don’t make their designs interesting in the process and this pair of character posters is Dullsville. (#19-#22) Poster design on the cheap. Take a fake city background and put your character in front of it and get him to brood. Sure, that’s Batman, but does he have to be so bland? And that’s about how you describe the rest of the character posters as well. (#23) An attempt at creative license and it somewhat works, but there’s nothing much else to look at either.

Trailer Rating: B- / C+ / B+

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) A nice collage of images suggesting the film was farther along before the pandemic than expected. While the new Batman doesn’t quite fit in every scene, the whole is at least filled with a certain intrigue that will keep audiences interested until the next trailer.

(#2) The audience already knows who Batman is as a character and so the Dark Knight doesn’t really need anything fancy to sell fans. That said, the trailer doesn’t do much to convince fans that this will be a fitting refresh of the property.

(#3) Throwing in more information about the plot along with several relatively inventive action sequences is a net positive with an unrelenting edit that makes some information difficult to parse and therefore a challenge to appreciate. Hopefully, the film is less chaotic.