Are you one of those film lovers who pine for the glory days of beautiful movie art and complain about the laziness of photoshopped, “the star’s giant head in front of an orange and teal background” modern film posters? The good news is that you’re far from alone, as evidenced here, there, and everywhere on the internet. The new trailer for the documentary "Twenty-Four by Thirty-Six" pays homage to the great painted movie posters of yesteryear, while reminding audiences that this passion is still alive in fans who create more artful and attractive posters than the studios themselves ever bother to make.
Not only are these fan-made posters often infinitely better than the official studio products, they also apparently sell for a surprising amount online. Perhaps Hollywood will one day take notice and spend longer than ten minutes on the poster design for a two hundred million dollar tent pole blockbuster. The film’s official website doesn’t specify a release date for the movie, which got some help via Kickstarter, so make sure to keep checking back. Meanwhile, an excellent documentary about poster artist Drew Struzan, who painted roughly 80% of your childhood, called "Drew: The Man Behind The Poster," is available on Netflix streaming and various VOD services.
I'll always have a fondness for the posters that showed effort. I don't hate every modern poster but most of them are downright terrible. Things like that Amazing Spider-Man 2 poster series are unfortunate carryovers from the comics, where the likes of wrap-around covers make (some) sense.