Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Rambo & Vantage Point





Key Elements

Rambo: Action is the key selling point of this and all Rambo movies. Little verbiage, other than the word Rambo, is used on the poster because everyone knows that Sylvester Stallone is Rambo. This poster conveys a sense of impending violence and the overall gray/brown color scheme gives the viewers a feeling of moral neutrality in the nature of the violence. In addition, Rambo is carrying a hand held weapon there by implying that the violence, this time, is going to be up front, bloody and personal.
Vantage Point: The movie poster is made up from a series of thumb nail pictures in the shape of a gun carrying man. It portrays a sense of confusion, mystery and suspense as well as doing a good job of forcing viewers to stop and stare at it for a bit to figure out what they are looking at. The thumb nail pictures are interestingly arranged in a manner that reveals Little about the story and cleverly mirrors the confusing nature of the film. Although there are a number of well known actors in the film, none of them are given prominence in the poster. The collage carries the mystery of the film and the poster is designed to purposefully leave out any single headliners.

Genre

Rambo: With out a doubt, the Rambo poster portrays an action movie all the way. A big muscle bound man hulking about carrying a weapon with lots of dark shadows covering up parts of him. You can't beat that for impending violence and it sells the genre well. However, one could argue that there is a small element of the adventure genre to it as well. Sly does, after all, go to a foreign country first before he starts killing thousands of people.
Vantage Point: This movie poster sells the suspense genre big-time. Nothing in he poster is clear cut. You have multiple thumb nail pictures from multiple angles in a collage setting in the outline of a man with a gun. The gun aspect gives the suspense genre its edge by implying an unknown level of danger. Because of the more ambiguous nature of suspense movies, and the more low key nature of their release, this poster was probably more important to its marketing success than the Rambo poster was to the Rambo movie.

Audience

Rambo: This is an interesting question because at first glance you would presume the poster was targeting the young male teenage audience. However, because of the long standing, and well known nature of this particular series, and because of the market draw of the main actor, who is inseparable from the main character, we believe the movie poster is actually targeting a much broader audience that has grown up with the Rambo character or who at least is familiar with Sylvester Stallone.
Vantage Point: Because the poster does not have any noticeable hooks for a particular demographic and because suspense moves in general are targeted towards large audiences we believe Vantage Point is also a general audience film. Little pre-publicity was generated for this movie so the poster was one of the main selling points. We suspect that the poster designers paid special attention into not biasing the movie towards any given audience and purposefully gave the poster a safe neutral feel.

Tagline

Rambo: There is no tagline as such; however, the word Stallone is printed in big lettering above the movie title. Because Sly is so inseparable from this role you could construe that this is the tagline. Being the last chapter in the Rambo series must have been seen as enough to sell the film so the poster makers simply put the actor's name, the movie title and the state date on the movie poster and that was it.
Vantage Point: This poster does have a tagline, and like the graphics, is designed to elicit a sense of suspense. It complements the confused collage nature of the graphics and helps draw the viewer into the "Vantage Point" world. The tagline sets the movie patrons up by telling them right off that there are "8 strangers, 8 points of view, 1 truth". Nice suspenseful pull in.
Erika, Rollie, William

7 comments:

blsanchez1962 said...

I actually saw Rambo, and the movie poster portrays the movie with the title alone. Everyone who has seen Rambo movies knows what they are in for, extreme action, suspense, and violence mixed with a storyline surrounding the main character. This movie poster entices movies goers with the picture of a large muscled man (Rambo) with weapons and the name - Rambo lovers anticipate another action-packed movie. However....Sylvester Stallone will not be able to keep the character of Rambo too much longer, because his age is showing and that in itself really made the movie a turnoff. There was plenty of blood and gore, and the storyline was admirable, but perhaps the next movie that should be considered for Sylvester Stallone should be "Rambo: The Nursing Home - Bedpan Chronicles". This is a case where the movie poster does entice audience-goers who enjoy this genre, yet the actor is ready to be put out to pasture.

Rollie said...

jajajajaja I would totally see that last Rambo Movie!!

Kim said...

The Vantage Point movie poster shows different people all at different angles and all in the body of a man. This definitely depicts how the movie will be. There is one event played over and over through the eyes of different viewers. They all saw the same event, but they each have their own take on how the event occurred. The movie poster would probably entice those who are in to suspenseful movies. However, watching the same scene over again is not my idea of great action packed fun.

leanne meador said...

I personally have never watched all of the Rambo movies, but I did watch this particular movie and I absolutely loved it. I love how this movie poster uses simplicity by just having Rambo himself on the cover. For most people who grew up watching these movies, they know to expect an action filled show with a lot of suspense. Even though I have only seen the last Rambo, I can see what this character has went though and how well developed he has become. I don't think that age is an issue at all, if anything I feel that his character grew with each movie that came out and it kept the audience wanting to come back for more. Keeping the movie poster simple and straight to the point worked as a huge advantage.

wtm said...

I saw Vantage Point when it first came out and I hated it. The hole concept of viewing a movie from 8 different perspectives grinds the viewer down. Everytime the movie got to a particular point it stopped and started over from the viewpoint of another person. You then had to sit there and watch the same thing all over again. This went on and on through 8 different people. Drove me mad!! I just wanted the film to be over. There was a lot of twists and turns, but the way it was shot ruined it all. I do like suspense movies just not shot in this repetitive manner. On a brighter note, the casting was good and the acting was good.

Ashely said...

I would have to say that the movie poster that was done for Rambo would be easy to market because Stallone was the only one to ever do the movies and is a huge star. They make it dark and scary which is how the movie is nad we don't have to see his face because he reputation procceds him. The Vantage Point movie poster does a fantastic job of looking at the movie and capturing that in a poster. The movie is about several people coming together to piece clues on how one man was shot. So it makes sense to have several peoples pictures forming a man silhouette. I really like the way that the designers caputerd the movies in the posters.

tgarley said...

I think they are similar in the way they both use red letters which can represent violence. There is also visual effects to both of the covers, but I think in this case I would rather see vantage point, especially since I have seen Rambo