The Oncoming Hope

Haywire, if you aren't aware, is Steven Soderbergh's new action extravaganza, starring such non B-listers as Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, and poor Gina Carano, photoshopped into oblivion. The American ads aren't really much better, but it's been a long time since I've seen such amateur work for a Hollywood movie.

If I didn't already know about Haywire, I would look at this poster and assume it's produced by the people who created this fictional film:

or a sequel to Frank Wrench:

Soundtracked by this guy:

As if the bad photoshopping isn't enough, check out the title font in the full poster!

This poster is so terrible that the designer clearly didn't even pay attention to the aspect ratios of the photos (unless of course there's some wild Hollywood conspiracy to keep us from knowing that Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire aren't people at all, but giant beach balls).

Unless there's some kind of circle jerk going on beneath those white frames, there is no excuse for those creepy smiles. Katie Holmes's face has been soft-focus blurred out of existence, as has Frances McDormand's. Don't even get me started on the atrociously unbalanced typography.

As you can see from the promotional photo above, the marketing for this film was generally atrocious. Share your thoughts on the poster in the comments.

I have written elsewhere about my general distaste for the concept of Shame. You can count me firmly on the side that there's no such thing as sex addiction, it's just a handy excuse for men who don't want to face responsibility for their actions.

But it's not the pure fantasy element that turns me off, it's the idea that an entire plot can be woven around "my sister thinks I'm having too much sex! I must have emo man-pain about this!"

Poor Michael Fassbender, he's so tormented by his superpower of having women throw themselves at him!

Anyway, this post wasn't meant to become a rant about the movie. It was meant to be an exercise in excoriating the poster below, the French poster for the film:

What's happening here? Is that a real body? If he's feeling shame, is it about his belly button hair? Or the impossible proportions of the torso shown?

Seriously, that must be a woman's torso, right? If so, why does SHE have belly button hair? Have the French lost all sense of Photoshop? I could go on.

But I won't.