Part of what made me fall in love with movies when I was a kid was the posters. The beautiful painted posters for movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars were about more than selling a movie. They were about creating new mythologies. (Of course, that was part of the marketing: mythology feels more urgent than just any old story, and hence are easier to sell.)
Now, Marvel is reviving that lost art with a series of magnificent posters for next year’s Avengers movie. I noted recently that movie posters today can be striking works of advertising, but I didn’t realize the larger-than-life myth element was missing from them until I saw these posters. Just a few in the series:
Important to the mythologizing is that the painted images are not perfect likenesses of the actors. They’re close, but there’s room enough for a sense that the characters are real people, not inventions being played by actors.
This last might be my favorite:
Not for the least reason that it echoes one of the key romantic images of my early geekhood:
Which was mythologized like this:
It imbues in me an even deeper, almost atavistic desire to see The Avengers. Which I have no doubt was the intention.
See more at Movies.com, where you can also see a full-size version of what happens when you link up the posters:
(Be sure to click to embiggen it.)
Read about the artists — Ryan Meinerding, Charlie Wen, and Andy Park — at Marvel.com.
