Color Poster Triptychs 04: Sunset

The release of the latest BLADE RUNNER 2049 teaser artwork reminded me that I have to dig deeper into the "giant broken statue head alludes to ancient culture" trope one of these days. That aside, it also triggered the following three sunset themed poster triptychs, one with lone women, one with lone men and one with couples:

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All of these posters are mainly conveying a certain mood. In THE LADY and WONDER WOMAN, the radiant orange associate these women with warmth but also power. On the other hand, the desaturated colors in the SUNSET SONG poster feel much more receding (the contrast on the character is definitely lower than in the one on the right), although the camera angle is much lower (compare the horizons). Needless to say, this is a low-budget realistically filmed literary adaptation rather than a catchpenny mainstream film. Stylistically, both the left and the middle poster capture the tone of the respective films quite well, even though the colors are more unified and stylized than in the actual films. Regarding the WONDER WOMAN poster, however, I have my doubts if DC is really going to give us a film that does not revel in the desaturated bluish gray dreary look with occasional red spots.

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In contrast to the inert women above, all three posters depict determined men that are actively walking towards us. I assume that a poster like the one from WHAT DREAMS MAY COME would probably look quite different if it were remade today. Probably, Robin Williams' color would reflect more of the orange surroundings. Since the middle and left one are staged against the sun/reflection, we only see them as dark and mysterious silhouettes. Again, the one in the middle is from a British arthouse film. In the case MR. TURNER about the later years of atmospheric landscape painter William Turner, the choice of a late-in-the-day mood poster is obvious. The sparse LOGAN poster, on the other hand, implicates  a tired old western outlaw coming back from the sunset without his horse, which is basically what happens in the film.

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Finally, here we have three unexpected pairings in more or less fantastical settings. Granted, WAR HORSE takes place during the Great War and A UNITED KINGDOM is based on the true-life romance of the royal couple of Botswana, but the films themselves feel more like fairy tales (if not as openly fantastical as THE SHACK) which is picked up by the soft background clouds and sky stylings. All of these characters are looking at something outside of the frame while their heads visually overlap. What I especially like about these three posters is the clearly stereotyped serif typeface for these kinds of stories. Just compare them to the simpler, plainer fonts used for the comic adaptations LOGAN and WONDER WOMAN above.