So the buzz on X-Men First Class has been fairly good leading up to a solid teaser trailer. Mathew Vaughn brought us the fantastic gangster flick Layer Cake and followed that with the highly under-appreciated Kick Ass, so he seemed a perfect pick for the director’s chair. Bryan Singer gave us one great X-Men film and one OK one, so having him as a producer is a positive. Fans of Mad Men were even happy to see January Jones taking on the role of Emma Frost. It’s all good right?

Well thank you 20th Century Fox for bursting out X-shaped bubble. New posters for the film have been released and they are pretty awful. There’s also some international posters, which are much better at introducing us to these characters. See all the new posters here below.

Often floating head posters are utilized in marketing a film to either trade on star power or to get the audience familiar with the faces in the film. It’s sort of understandable that Fox would want to get us familiar with the new younger actors taking on the roles that we’ve been accustomed to being played by others. Some sort of poster with these new actors in their roles was expected. Fox also seems to be concerned that the audience won’t remember who is who in this prequel film and won’t understand that this film is part of the overall X-Men franchise based on the awkward looking new posters.

The worst one has to be the Professor X one because it shows a silhouette of him bald and in the wheelchair, but he won’t be either in this film. Then you get the headshot of the young Professor, played by James McAvoy, fading into the silhouette sort of ominously, not matching the feel of the film at all based on the clips and trailer we’ve seen. There’s a similar-styled poster for Magneto which is only slightly less embarrassing.

Marvel has released a set of international one sheets that aren’t as terrible as these domestic posters and they make better use at showing what’s to come, but they’re still lifeless and desperate. The taglines are just goofy. For example, the Magneto one reads, “Before he was Magneto he was Erik” and the Professor X one reads “Before he was Professor X he was Charles.” The taglines do set up the story, but they honestly feel as lifeless as the one sheets. Also, for people that are less familiar with the X-Men, wouldn’t you want to show something that represents the action of the film?

I just hope the movie isn’t as lifeless and awkward as the marketing materials are. What do you guys think?

Posters

[Source: Marvel | X-Men FB]