On the Other Hand: That poster for X-men Apocalypse
Note: I meant to write about this at the time but got side-tracked. Once the hullabaloo died I figured there was no point bringing the topic up. However, in two separate instances this topic came up (one unprovoked, the other in relation to another comic controversy) in the last week. So, as a catharsis I am going to whack this down in digital form.
Warning, this post contains very mild spoilers for Sicario and X-Men: Apocalypse, and may contain images that some people might find disturbing.
For the back story, Fox studios released a poster (pictured above) advertising the latest X-Men film. The image is pretty striking with the main villain Apocalypse, played by Oscar Isaac, choking out one of the leads Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence. This poster was met with some consternation, Rose McGowan being the Figure head, that the image is deeply problematic. In turn, this initial outcry received a backlash from fans and enthusiasts, mainly complaining that it was political correctness gone mad, or yet more SJW nonsense.
Fox eventually apologised and discontinued the use of the image in promotional materials.
How I feel about the poster itself kind of swings back and forth, so to create even more words about a topic that probably had too many words anyway here are my two conflicting sides.
On the One Hand
The poster doesn’t bother me. This is the final part of a trilogy and the conflict is one of ever escalating stakes. Jennifer Lawrence’s character has been one of the centre pieces of these conflicts, and is represented as a competent, kick-arse woman trying to make her way in a hostile world. So, having her at the mercy of the new villain sends a clear message, the stakes are high and even one of the strongest, most popular characters of the series is no match for this new antagonist.
With foreknowledge of Apocalypse from the comics, this image also clearly tells me that he is going to be portrayed true to his near godlike power, where mutants of considerable strength are not going to be significant challenges to him.
The image is effective in conveying how catastrophic this villain’s impact will be during the film. Fitting for a film named ‘Apocalypse’.
There are arguments to be made for putting the shot in context of the film itself too. The scene before this shot is part of a battle in which Mystique slices open Apocalypse’s throat and he shrugs it off then retaliates. Mystique is far from a helpless princess in the film (anyone that has watched any of the previous 5 films would attest to that), she just isn’t enough to take out Apocalypse on her own.
On the Other Hand
I left it at that for a while and it wasn’t until I watched a film called Sicario that I started thinking about it again. The film stars Emily Blunt as a competent Federal agent drawn into a shady war between South American drug lords and the American government.
There is a scene half way through the film that emphasises how out of depth she is where she ends up alone with a man she is supposed to trust and, instead he assaults her.
It is an effective, disturbing moment that helps put you in her position and it serves to drill home how messed up the situation is.
Above is the main poster they used to promote the film (there are two other really good posters they used as well). It is a generic film promotional shot but it tells a basic story. Emily Blunt has a commanding position at the front of the poster. Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are further behind, their prominence is indicative of the amount of time they spend in the film. A little bit of trivia, marketing found that they sold more tickets if people could see the eyes of the protagonist on the poster. This provides an implicit suggestion as to Del Toro and Brolin’s roles in the film.
The poster is boilerplate stuff (and X-men Apocalypse has some of its own versions of this) but it’s competent enough.
Here is my alternate poster I threw together using the scene I described from Sicario, and put it under the same lens as the controversial X-men Apocalypse.
If you have seen the film, this shot has context, and does not feel exploitative. Out of context and with no prior knowledge of the film that poster can interpreted in multiple ways with a completely different tone. It would not be hard to imagine that Sicario was actually a revenge film in the vein of I Spit On Your Grave.
The X-men Apocalypse poster presupposes a lot from its audience. That they have seen the previous films, that they know who Mystique is, and that they understand Apocalypse’s history. So, this means having years of comic and film canon history tucked into your back pocket.
Standing back and trying to divorce myself from context, the X-men poster is a purple man strangling a blue woman; a kaleidoscopic horror film, a colourful Giger depiction.
Needing context to explain an image is a difficult proposition, especially when it is presented in public to a lot of people that don’t have the same life experiences. The X-men franchise is huge, true, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to get that.
The other problem is accuracy versus authenticity. It is accurate that both scenes are in their respective films. But taking them as a snapshot of the film is not authentic to either films’ experience as a whole.
However, by that same argument, using that snapshot as promotional material definitely suggests that it does embody the values of the film and given that this aimed at young adults as fantasy adventure. That is a problem.
Conclusion:
Context is everything.
It is impossible for me to extricate what I know about the X-men when I look at the poster and so much baggage comes with that, it makes it difficult for me not have a ‘yes, but…’ in a kneejerk defensive manner.
At the same time, I totally understand the poster’s detractors, it is a weird message for Fox marketing to endorse and they clearly saw that too, hence why they discontinued the image.
I think it is worth talking through though, and unfortunately too much of the effort was placed on telling people that didn’t like that poster for the message it embodied to shut up. In this ‘post-truth world’ we are now finding ourselves in, that is more worrying to me than anything.
As an alternative (the quality is going to be bad as I pulled this screen grab from Youtube), I threw this together:
Same kind of theme, powerful villain easily overcoming hero. But the pose of the hero isn’t one of pure victimhood but instead struggle.
Can we talk about how bad X-men Apocalypse is at some point too?
