BORING DVD ART: Spider-Man

Sony has just announced that they are releasing Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy on Blu-Ray. Never mind they've already released it on Blu-Ray. This set comes with new special features never before seen on Blu-Ray! And "hey, I just bought PhotoShop, I wonder what I can do with it" cover art.

First, the original DVD art for the trilogy:

Say what you will about these movies (I enjoy them all but love the first two), this is some great cover art. Simple, stylized, iconic, and compelling. They make you want to pick them up, turn them over, and find out more about this red and blue tight-wearing superhero. What does Sony choose over these for their "new and improved" Blu-Ray release?

What the what?

Who signed off on these? It's as if Sony is trying to retroactively make everyone hate Sam Raimi's trilogy.

You can get even more info over at Marvel.com.

BORING DVD ART: Sparky Edition

Coming soon to a theater/DVD player/Blu-Ray player/digital file format player near you: SPARKS! They seem to have become the poster creator's favorite new element. Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it looks like they're trying to make us think we're about to step into the sequel for Backdraft that never was.

Drive Angry? Okay. Nicolas Cage is try to escape Hell, so one should expect a certain firey element there. Transformers? Um . . . sure. There's a lot of metal grinding on metal in that movie, so I'm sure there's going to be some sparking. But The Dark Knight? "Maybe it's symbolic of the impending doom and chaos that's about to engulf Gotham?" "Yes! Use it for Harry Potter, too! Just switch 'Gotham' for 'Hogwarts!'"

But one can only assume that there's a scene in the new Conan movie where Conan the Barbarian literally tries to put out a fire with his sword.

Sparks: The art department's cowbell.

Never mind. I take it all back. That's friggin' bad ass.

BORING DVD ART: Mr and Mrs Smith

It's not so much as boring DVD art as bad DVD art design. Every time I see it, I chuckle. They're so proud that this is the unrated version of Mr and Mrs Smith, they inadvertently created Unrated, starring Mr and Mrs Smith (as played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).

BORING DVD ART: The Matrix Revolutions

All the Matrix movies had amazing art campaigns. I was especially fond of The Matrix Reloaded poster series that displayed all the new and returning characters predominately on a white background while cutting off the character's head. There was something really eye-catching about those. It made you want to see more. The Matrix Revolutions poster art wasn't as daring as Reloaded's, but they definitely foreshadowed the epic nature of the trilogy's conclusion.

But then it came time for the DVD art and . . . it was as if they just stopped caring. While the two original movies displayed the three heroes predominately, the third DVD just slapped four of the posters together. And while this does reflect the splintered hodge-podge mess that is the third movie, is this the laziness you want representing your movie? I'd like to call it artistic schizophrenia, but it's really just lazy.

BORING DVD ART: Jersey Girl

This might have been the movie that made me first ask, "why would you trade this for that?"

The adorable poster art:

The freshman-art-student-who-just-learned-PhotoShop DVD cover:

Bleh.

BORING DVD ART: Never Let Me Go

I'm very curious as to how studios view DVD cover art and how that view is different from how they view poster art. I've often seen absolutely spectacular movie posters and then very boring DVD cover art follow it up. Why the change?

Why would you choose to go from something moving and evocative . . .

. . . to something boring and utterly forgettable?