30th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray

[Furstmobile]

Looks like a composite of old photos from this moment in the alley. So far the only official cover to be based on Hot Toys was "Return of the Caped Crusaders" which was pretty embarrassing. The Batman vs Two-Face followup had a cool original illustration though. These are old streaming/itunes things like said above, whoever made it just turned the 2005 typeface orange. The superman 4k cover used a vintage style logo.

[DarkVengeance]

I'm just really hoping that on top of this artwork being temporary, WB does put some effort into new extras. It sounds like this IS getting a new Dolby Atmos mix so I feel the positives outweigh the negatives when it comes to technical aspects.

[The Laughing Fish]

I noticed the Joker on the cover is a retouched illustration of Kenner's action figure wrapping for the movie. Talk about laziness.



Speaking of action figures, I had that toy but I never knew you could dip in water to change the face's colour.

[The Laughing Fish]

^I just realised that sketch of Joker is actually based on this photo, from the scene where he shot Carl Grissom to death.



If you're going to show the characters on the front cover of a home video release, just use the real photographs.

[GoNerdYourself]

Man, I hope they don't use that cover.

DVD covers usually didn't look horrid, but still begged the question why they even tried to remake something that worked. Yet something about the BluRay generation just brings out the worst of the trend.

I feel like DVD is when film art plummeted. For example, the photoshopped Star Wars covers ignoring the brilliant theatrical posters while trying to recreate the feel of those better images with a sloppy cast assembly culled from production stills. All of which to simulate uniformity, which had already been present in Struzan's work for the series.

Although, I seem to recall a few instances when even the VHS switched out great art for an awful cover. For example, Last Action Hero had an adventurous one sheet, with Schwarzenegger flying out of the big screen, holding on to a helicopter. The VHS was just a boring still of Arnold holding a gun. This is also when they started to drop all of the great James Bond posters for poorly photoshopped stills of the various Bonds photoshopped in front of pivotal scenes and environments.

[thecolorsblend]

Man, I hope they don't use that cover.

DVD covers usually didn't look horrid, but still begged the question why they even tried to remake something that worked. Yet something about the BluRay generation just brings out the worst of the trend.

I feel like DVD is when film art plummeted. For example, the photoshopped Star Wars covers ignoring the brilliant theatrical posters while trying to recreate the feel of those better images with a sloppy cast assembly culled from production stills. All of which to simulate uniformity, which had already been present in Struzan's work for the series.

Although, I seem to recall a few instances when even the VHS switched out great art for an awful cover. For example, Last Action Hero had an adventurous one sheet, with Schwarzenegger flying out of the big screen, holding on to a helicopter. The VHS was just a boring still of Arnold holding a gun. This is also when they started to drop all of the great James Bond posters for poorly photoshopped stills of the various Bonds photoshopped in front of pivotal scenes and environments.

With respect, I understand your point but I don't think I agree.

Putting aside whether anybody loves the movie, comparing the Episode 1 DVD cover to the same's theatrical poster pretty well explains the intent behind changing the cover for DVD made a lot of sense.

The theatrical poster was intended to maintain the tradition of the original trilogy's one sheets while also suggesting the threat posed by Darth Maul (Is he the titular Phantom Menace?, a passerby might wonder) behind a collage which positions Anakin in the center. As visual summations go, leave it Drew Struzan to hit the nail exactly on the head. Love or hate the movie like I say, but I can't knock the poster too much. That one sheet is next door neighbors with Almost Flawless.

That is (or was) the main job for a theatrical one sheet.

But DVD covers (and, I suppose, Blu-Ray covers) have a different task. They have to stand out on a shelf of merchandise. Ideally, the major elements of the movie should be visually represented on a DVD cover prominently enough to be visible to a would-be customer standing several feet away. Now, I could knock the DVD somewhat for minimizing Queen Amidala on the cover (she has a major role in the movie), over-emphasizing Obi-Wan (his role is smaller than the Queen) and omitting Darth Maul entirely. But they only have so much space to work with so maybe Maul's absence isn't such a big deal.



And yet, the DVD cover uses a lot of the same basic elements as the one sheet: same portraits for Queen Amidala, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Plus, the Star Wars logo is big and prominent, eye-catching to passing shoppers. So it's not a total loss. A rather competent DVD cover, all things considered.

Speaking of the the theatrical one sheet as a DVD cover though...



Forgive the crudeness of that custom cover but it was the best I could find that wasn't massive resolution.

All the details I mentioned above would be much harder to see had the one sheet been used for the DVD. It would've been a visual banquet for anybody who knew nothing about Episode 1 and picked the DVD off the shelf. What are the odds of nobody having ever seen it though, right? But anyway, a close examination of the one sheet as a DVD cover would've uncovered so many small details.

But that's the thing, they're small details, virtually invisible from more than a few feet away. No good for DVD covers.

In the final analysis, did video kill the theatrical one sheet (in addition to the radio star)?

[GoNerdYourself]

True. It's probably fairer for me to say that there are times when home video art is efficient and time when it's pretty terrible. The prequel covers weren't so bad. The original films DVDs were the culprits I was thinking of and upon reflection, it all comes down to the quality of work, not the intention. Recently, Universal re-issued the first three Jurassic Park films with cover art that reflected the look Jurassic World's marketing. It's all about uniformity in the brand, but the execution was odd. Especially on the first film, which featured a weird choice in how Grant and the T-Rex are posed.

With what you're saying, I've always found the artwork that best pops from shelf are the simplistic ones. Recently, there's been a trend of re-issuing films with just a single character's face and the title. The better examples include the Star Wars steelbooks and a number of Disney/Pixar films. This is why the poster for Batman (and likewise, Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park) worked so well. It was simple, used effective iconography that stood out amongst other images and immediately caught the onlooker's attention while also perfectly encapsulating what the film was about.

Either way, I'm splitting hairs. I want the artwork, new or old, to be good. But the presentation and preservation of the film itself is what matters most. I'm excited these films are coming to 4K.

[thecolorsblend]

Quite true. But sometimes you'd get oddities with the DVD covers. The 2006 re-release of the original trilogy (which included the unaltered movies in crappy quality) is a good example. The covers intentionally emulated theatrical one sheets. The effect was... interesting.







It's up to you how attractive those covers are. There's no accounting for taste. But I at least appreciated the fact that someone at Lucasfilm was thinking far enough ahead to tie the one sheet replication thing with the unaltered trilogy re-release. Gives the DVD's a sort of interesting internal consistency. The menus were animated recreations of original theatrical one sheets, which was another nice touch.

[GoNerdYourself]

One thing I liked about the 2006 release was that the posters they emulated appeared on the back. Something similar was done with the steelbook Blu-Ray editions and the result was pretty slick.

Speaking of those Star Wars steelbooks, I wouldn't mind seeing something similar with the Burton/Schumacher films using the villains.

[Slash Man]

Interesting to bring Star Wars up, because despite the trend of inferior home release covers those ones still obeyed basic design principles and were visually interesting. Yes, something I neglected to consider was the size and ratio difference you deal with when converting to DVD/BluRay cover. The criticized Force Awakens poster art was actually used for the home release, and the issues with how clustered it is become compounded when you shrink down the art further. The whole 2006 DVDs replicating the poster art with a digital collage seems purely like an attempt at "modernizing" it.

With the rest of the films excluded, the classic bat symbol art of the original is just perfect for all mediums. I completely forgot that the VHS cover didn't even have any words on the cover. That was a bold move.