Posters of Prominence: After Earth

You might be thinking: “Why in the world would this be considered a Poster of Prominence?”

The reason is it’s a truly terrible poster.

Right away, we have a bland poster, highlighted by the name of the movie in huge text: “AFTER EARTH”.

Pause for dramatic effect.

Any movie poster that takes the route of gigantic text as the focal point of their poster is already in trouble. We can see what is probably Earth in the background, with a glimmer of light near the top. I’m assuming this ray of light represents hope, because hey, doesn’t light always represent hope? The badness continues with the text above: “An M. Night Shyamalan Film”.

Pause for dramatic effect.

Almost everyone agrees The Last Airbender was an awful film (#33,190 of all-time) and a spit in the face of the wonderful Nickelodeon animated series. Shyamalan’s prior films’ quality (Lady in the Water, The Village, The Happening) have also been hotly debated. The prospect of seeing another Shyamalan-helmed film is not a very attractive audience proposition at the moment. You’d think Shyamalan should probably consider, at least for a time, removing his name from the vicinity of the title of the movie. 

Will Smith’s name on the poster does give some vague potential that the movie could likely be entertaining, if nothing else. He should of course also have automatic chemistry with his co-starring son, Jaden Smith. The poster also gives viewers the credit information at the bottom and the release date that they crave so dearly.

If we look at another After Earth poster…

Wait, this is the same poster, just with crude, floating-head cutouts of Will Smith and Jaden Smith! Why didn’t the studio just release this one first?