Just how many copywriters were harmed in the creation of the Indiana Jones one-sheet?
By Burbanked on Mar 11, 2008 in Henry Jones Jr., Movie Marketing 101, Movies, One-Sheetery | 762 views |
Unlike last time, I don’t plan to get all negative and cranky about the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull one-sheet that most of my blogging colleagues have already ranted and raved about. After all, this is a terrific poster, completely in line with those created by Drew Struzan for the previous movies, and goes far toward getting me amped up for the movie’s May release date.
I could certainly go on a bit about the fact that Marion Ravenwood looks like she’s posing for her faculty snapshot in the Nepal Valley High School yearbook, but I won’t. And I briefly thought about questioning why Ray Winstone is pictured in a strange hat that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the marketing materials and which kind of makes him look like a grown-up version of Spanky - but I don’t want to do that. And I seriously will not come close to questioning the massive and completely not-subtle prominence of the titular Crystal Skull on this poster which makes me wonder why the Last Crusade sheet didn’t picture a huge, glowing chalice or the original Raiders marketing materials didn’t show us the Ark all opened up and revealed.
No, I will not question any of these details.
Because instead I find myself wondering where the poster’s tagline went.
- The Return of the Great Adventure.
- If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.
- The Man With the Hat Is Back. And This Time He’s Bringing His Dad.
- Have the Adventure Of Your Life Keeping Up With the Joneses.
Don’t misunderstand: it’s not that a movie one-sheet has to have a tagline, and I’ve obviously not been shy in the past to share with you when these have been abused by movie marketers. But it seems as though the Crystal Skull materials have, so far, adhered to a rather rigid, tried-and-true strategy of recalling both our nostalgia as well as our marketing comfort levels, so I can only assume that the lack of a movie tagline here suggests the following:
- The movie’s plot has no discernible marketing “hook”
- The marketers have chosen to avoid hitting the most obvious reference - Indy’s age - as often as they might have been inclined to
- Paramount does not want give all of us nervous fanboys any additional ammunition for mockery (”The return of the great adventure…to the nursing home! LOL!”)
- George Lucas has just as much contempt for copywriters as he does for everyone else
Ultimately, I don’t really miss a tagline because most of them tend to be horrible. I’m just curious at the omission of a basic marketing tool that is often standard in such campaigns, especially when this campaign seems to be hitting every other standard beat. Maybe the lack of a tagline is a simple thing, barely considered by the teams involved - but I’d guess that there was a tactical reasoning behind it, and that kind of stuff always makes me wonder.
After the jump, let’s enjoy an exercise in futility. I’ve assembled a look at the taglines - good, bad and miserable - for the high-profile movie releases between now and Crystal Skull’s May 22 premier date, and you can decide how important or how impotent these can be…
Interesting to note that of these 19 movies, only two one doesn’t include a tagline - and one of those was because I couldn’t find a one-sheet for it! Larking at Movie Poster Addict just sent me one that I was missing. Thanks, dude!
| Movie/Release Date | Tagline | Reaction? |
|---|---|---|
| Doomsday, 3.14.08 | Mankind has an expiration date. | Makes absolutely no sense. |
| Horton Hears a Who!, 3.14.08 | None! | This movie has multiple character posters with taglines, and they’re all pretty much what you’d expect. |
| Drillbit Taylor, 3.21.08 | You get what you pay for. | Only works if you already know the movie’s premise. |
| Meet the Browns, 3.21.08 | You can’t choose your family, you can only pack accordingly. | You can’t? You can? What does this mean? |
| 21, 3.28.08 | Inspired by the true story of five students who changed the game forever. | Terrifically dull. We’re supposed to care based on that? |
| Run, Fatboy, Run, 3.28.08 | Love. Commitment. Responsibility. There’s nothing he can’t run away from. | A bit long, but still pretty good. |
| Leatherheads , 4.4.08 | In the beginning, the rules were simple. There weren’t any. | Decent. Works well with the poster’s visual. |
| The Ruins, 4.4.08 | Terror has evolved. | Makes absolutely no sense, Part II. |
| Street Kings, 4.11.08 | Their city. Their rules. No prisoners. | Classic use of the threes. Not very inspired. |
| Smart People, 4.11.08 | Sometimes the smartest people have the most to learn. | Not very interesting or funny. This must be a boring drama movie. I think I’ll skip it. |
| 88 Minutes, 4.18.08 | He has 88 minutes to solve a murder. His own. | Bleh. Nothing like depending on the tagline to explain the whole movie. |
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall, 4.18.08 | The ultimate romantic disaster movie | A nice twist of the familiar phrase. |
| Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, 4.25.08 | This time they’re running from the joint. | Not bad at all. References that it’s a sequel, drug humor and the new movie’s setting. |
| Baby Mama, 4.25.08 | Would you put your eggs…in this basket? | That’s an okay tagline, but the visual on the poster doesn’t support it much. |
| Made of Honor, 5.2.08 | It takes a real man to become a maid of honor. | Trying too hard. Oh, and completely untrue and nonsensical. |
| Iron Man, 5.2.08 | None! | Actually, this poster doesn’t really need it. |
| Speed Racer, 5.9.08 | From the creators of “The Matrix” trilogy comes a world built for speed. | It’s interesting, if not creative. Seems to be aiming low for a general audience. |
| What Happens in Vegas…, 5.9.08 | Get lucky. | got boring? |
| The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, 5.16.08 | Everything You Know Is About To Change Forever. | A bit too vague. |
So what’s the verdict? Do movie one-sheets need the tagline or not?
Okay, now I’ll just admit that I’m trying to freshen up my sidebar a little. But this is a nifty piece of Batman-themed editing:
© Copyright 
Carlo | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
I like how the Nazi woman and the kid are positioned so that their clothes form Indiana Jones’ shoulders. It gives the poster good harmony.
Adam R | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
Love your comment on “Made of Honor,” and I’d like to add that the tagline ensures that roughly 90% of American men won’t see this movie voluntarily.
What struck me about the one sheet is how Indy appears in it twice. I guess I understand how the smaller Indy is supposed to be running from those natives, but is he also running from the gaze of everyone else pictured? Isn’t it a bit redundant to remind us that the title character appears in the movie?
Larking | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
Low quality Baby Mama poster. And the tag line is: “Would you put your eggs… in this basket?”
James | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
Exactly what I have been saying about the new Indiana Jones.
The trailer, too, suffers from similar problems.
My guess, is it is marketers are fucking idiots. They’d rather crunch numbers and force something into a demographic, instead of thinking up a creative way to lure audiences into a movie.
* The movie’s plot has no discernible marketing “hook”
This isn’t it.
There’s a father son hook… This time Indy and HIS son. The father son hook worked in the third one. “Keeping up with the Jones’s. That’s an EASY hook, that’s made no mention of in any of the press material.
* The marketers have chosen to avoid hitting the most obvious reference - Indy’s age - as often as they might have been inclined to
Seems they are trying to avoid this. Why? Harrison Ford has no problem with it. Neither does Lucas. The story itself isn’t trying to hide Indy’s age. In interviews he specifically says Indy is older…
…so make it a SELLING point.
* Paramount does not want give all of us nervous fanboys any additional ammunition for mockery (”The return of the great adventure…to the nursing home! LOL!”)
Pussies.
* George Lucas has just as much contempt for copywriters as he does for everyone else
Not sure this is true. He loves the old fashion serials… and talk about AMAZING copywriters.
It’s marketers/advertisers that are too lazy to do the bare minimum of their job. Create a campaign that gets people with no prior knowledge of the material wanting to see it.
Burbanked | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
No, not really. Truth is, all three of the other Indiana Jones one-sheets featured the Big Head Indy as well as the Smaller Action Indy, so in that way this sheet is following the convention yet again.
James: the Indy/Shia father/son hook is still, as far as I’m concerned, a plot rumor. It may very well turn out to be true, but even if it is there’s no way in hell Spielberg and Lucas would want to give that away on the poster.
And I never said that I thought this marketing was lazy. If anything it’s simply following the established rulebook for this series. That’s not necessarily a bad idea and the upcoming DVD release will go much farther toward “getting the people with no prior knowledge of the material wanting to see it.”
DougJ | Mar 12, 2008 | Reply
Where’s Connory? Oh, we couldn’t afford him? Well throw an alien skull thingy in there and no one will notice.
Tucker | Mar 12, 2008 | Reply
I like how Jones looks very relaxed, like he just had a couple of drinks (maybe five or six), and is ready to watch the younger generation do all the work for once. I have to say his face looks more like a kindly old man sitting on a chair than the rugged adventurer of the past.
Burbanked | Mar 12, 2008 | Reply
Liz | Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
Wow, that Prince Caspian tagline is just awful. I seriously doubt that a fantasy movie is going to change everything I know, even for a short time.
Damian | Mar 16, 2008 | Reply
First of all, I wasn’t aware that this had finally been revealed, Burbanked, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. Not bad IMO. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Drew Struzan (he was the artist who, along with the late great John Alvin, first got me interested in movie poster art), so he probably could’ve done anything with this one-sheet and I would’ve liked it. It does feel a little too similar to the Last Crusade one-sheet (just as the Crystal Skull teaser poster felt a little too similar to the Temple of Doom teaser) for me to be totally blown away by it. However, one thing I do try to keep in mind is that Struzan has not only designed posters for the previous Indy films but has done cover artwork for about a dozen novels which dramatise further Indiana Jones adventures (a couple of which I used to own but never read all the way through). At some point an artist just exhausts his/her resources and perhaps for Struzan, at least as far as depicting Indiana Jones in an original manner is concerned, the well has run dry.
Secondly, I’ve always been fascinated by taglines. The concept of summing up an entire film into one or two sentences is intriguing to me. Personally speaking, I tend to enjoy most of taglines (even the bad ones) and appreciate when a film has one. I can also appreciate, however, when a it is felt that a film just doesn’t need one. I’ve always liked, for example, that the posters for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ didn’t have anything like “You will believe” plastered on them. I think it would just have been unnecessary and corny. Likewise, I’m not sure the fourth Indiana Jones film (like the Star Wars prequels) even needs a tagline. It’s a film that, As I’ve said before, essentially sells itself.
Finally, if I can engage in a bit shameless self-promotion for a second, I’ve had opportunities to create a few taglines myself for theatrical shows that I was involved in. A little over a year ago I directed a production of Dracula for which I designed most of the publicity and I came up with the tagline “Evil never dies… it only sleeps.” to put on the posters. Not a brilliant tagline I admit, but I liked it. I’ve also always been rather proud of the one I conceived for a production of Father of the Bride (based on the same source material as the Spencer Tracy film and its Steve Martin remake). It read: “A comedy about love, marriage and other expenses.”
Burbanked | Mar 16, 2008 | Reply
I think that’s pretty much what I’ve been feeling about Crystal Skull all along. I’m excited for it, jazzed to see it, want it to be great - but ultimately it all feels like similar stuff, ground already covered, fun but nothing new.
I agree that even the corny taglines can be fun and that some movies certainly don’t need them. I’m just fascinated that this one doesn’t have them, when all the rest DID, and made the tactical marketing decision to include them previously. Really, by the standards you’ve suggested, the second and third Indy movies shouldn’t have needed them, either.