Here’s a new poster for X-Men: First Class and, if I didn’t know for certain that it came straight from Fox, I would have assumed this was some sort of ill-conceived fan art and just ignored it in favor of covering something else. But no, this is an actual piece of X-Men: First Class promotional material, and what Fox has done here qualifies as utterly indescribable.
See it for yourself:
If you work at Fox and you’re reading this, it probably seems like I’m all up in your grill (do people still say that?). After all, I dragged your company into this unrelated rant earlier today, for seemingly no reason at all. I’m sorry. You brought this on yourself, because that’s an awful… whatever that is. The photoshop work involved in this square logo thingy isn’t even good enough to qualify for the back of a cereal box.
I’m genuinely excited about X-Men: First Class and the trailer released earlier today looks kind of good. I say kind of, because it really wasn’t all that different from the other trailers. A lot of the marketing for this movie seems to boil down to one of two things: Showing us the same thing we’ve already seen over and over and over again… or showing us something horrible. Most of the posters have been horrible. Most of the trailers have actually just been the same trailer recut in different ways.
It seems like something has gone horribly wrong over at Fox. I don’t really blame their marketing department. Not really. Actually I’m not sure they have one. I’m in constant contact with the PR departments of nearly ever other major studio, but the only time I hear from Fox is when their lawyers want to threaten me with an unwarranted cease and desist notice. Unlike every other Hollywood studio, they don’t even have an actual Fox press site. They only really give promotional items for their movies out as exclusives to corporate promotional partners, and half the time they’re partners that no one has ever heard of, relegating what passes as an advertisement for their upcoming film to a place where it will only be seen by your grandma if she accidentally clicks on one of those “shoot the monkey” banner ads.
This poster, and just about everything else that Fox has gotten wrong lately (and there’s a lot of it) seems like what happens when lawyers take over an artistic endeavor and push out all the creative people. Maybe that's what's happening at Fox. Lawyers suck at art. And they suck at posters too. I’m pretty sure this one sheet was photoshopped together by a legal assistant, on the lunch break she took right after prepping the takedown notices her boss is going to send out should anyone bother to share it with you.
That tearing sound you just heard was our access to all future Fox press events being cut off. Aw, who am I kidding? The probably weren’t going to invite us to anything anyway.
