Old-timers like me can remember back to the dark ages of 1990, when Ivan Reitman's Kindergarten Cop came out.  The posters for Kindergarten Cop featured star Arnold Schwarzenegger enduring the enthusiastic attention of a bunch of five-year-olds.  The joke was clear: the Terminator can travel through time and walk through explosions, but a bunch of five-year-olds is a little too much for him.

Then something strange happened: a few weeks into the run of Kindergarten Cop, the posters suddenly changed -- the "overwhelmed" Arnold became the "beaming" Arnold.  I remember clearly, I was living in New York, and all through the subways the Kindergarten Cop posters suddenly went from funny to not-funny.  Arnold overwhelmed by children is funny, Arnold proudly hoisting kids is not.

Why did this happen?  It happened because the studio heard concerns from parents, who thought that Arnold looked a little too overwhelmed in the original poster.  Schwarzenegger was known at the time for movies like Predator, Raw Deal and Commando, hyper-violent action movies with little regard for human life.  Parents saw the poster for Kindergarten Cop and read on Arnold's face that he was about to snap and kill all the children climbing on him.  Kindergarten Cop isn't really a family movie, but studio concerns are studio concerns and the posters were changed.  And, as you can see, the "nicer" poster still exists in some territories.



Now check this out: at the left is the original poster for Up.  There's Carl Fredricksen, dangling from a garden hose, his face a mask of terror appropriate to the situation.  On the right is the blu-ray cover: Carl is no longer terrified -- rather, he looks positively beatific, as though shot up with morphine.  Hanging by a garden hose in mid-air?  Nothing could be more pleasurable for this Carl.  He's even carrying a dog!

Why?  What was wrong with the original poster?  I can see why the marketing people would want to crowd the other characters around Carl to make the image "read" faster in the smaller format, but why is Carl no longer concerned about his situation?  Up is, as millions know already, a delightful comedy and a heartfelt observation of humanity, why did the marketing people think it necessary to iron out the small amount of tension present in the original poster design?  You know, the image that got millions of people to see the movie in the first place?  All I can think of is that the marketing people wanted to remind people that Up is, in the end, a pleasant experience, and erase from the DVD-buyer's mind all the non-happy emotions associated with the project -- like, for instance, the pain and humiliation that causes Carl to want to tie a bunch of balloons to his house in the first place.



Then, I saw this just today, and I'm completely baffled.  The poster for Alvin and the Chipmunks, while no great graphic feat, looks just fine to me -- there are a group of smart-alec chipmunks, and there is Dave, who looks slightly skeptical at the prospect of caring for the chipmunks.  That seems to me to be the kindest, most generous way to present the movie, since the narrative is about how Alvin and his pals drive Dave to ruin.  They could have presented Dave as being angry, harried or overwhelmed, but they went with slightly skeptical, and that's fine.  Alvin and the Chipmunks is a kids' movie, and parents want to know, for sure, that a kids' movie is okay for kids to watch, and I understand that.  You wouldn't design a poster for Alvin and the Chipmunks to look like a poster for Saw, you would make it bright and colorful and benign.  And you would give it a white background with red lettering, so people would know it's a comedy (I don't know how that formulation came into being, but it has).

But then look at the blu-ray cover.  Dave isn't even slightly skeptical any more, now he's -- I don't even know what he is.  Seeking approval?  Blandly optimistic?  Apologetic?  Is the studio actually trying to tell us that they were worried that the original design was too threatening, too off-putting for somebody?  The chipmunks dressed as rap stars look positively stupid next to Dave's new face, whereas his response in the original poster seems completely appropriate: he's looking askance at them and asking us to join him in his skepticism.  In the new image, he's completely disconnected from the chipmunks, seemingly helpless and neutered.  He doesn't even seem to be in the same picture-plane as the chipmunks any more, he's just this face kind of floating near them.  Did the studio honestly think that this would help sell DVDs?  What person who wants to purchase a copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks in the first place would be put off by the original poster image?