Poster Talk: The Sky Crawlers

image: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-06-20/oshii

Right, this is Mamoru Oshii's latest film which I refered to in an earlier post. The poster has been out for some time and I can't gush enough about it. The design is deceptively simple. Some people naturally would complain that like their first teaser advert of blue sky and fluffy clouds, this poster tells us absolutely nothing about the film. I agree. The poster says very little, and I don't know Japanese, so it's worse, since the taglines are beyond my comprehension too. Nevertheless, allow me to endeavour with gushing.

Firstly, before we get anywhere, a caveat. I am one of those people who are overly fond of blue skies dotted with clouds, so I am defintely approaching this from a biased point of view. If we had that Oz poster, I would assure you that blue skies and a rainbow would have found it's way into the poster somehow. In my defense, it would have fit the theme very much.

Right, so, on to the Sky Crawlers poster. It's nice. The simple design is refreshing. If you park it next to posters that try to squash as many famous faces as humanly possible into the frame, it'll be crowded, looks like a star vehicle (which the film likely is), and more importantly, looks as though it is trying too hard. A poster like this stands out from the rest because of it being opposite - sparse composition, and no stars or characters or various other objects to distract from its clean design. And because minimalist is always tasteful of course.

If you ask me, this poster works for me because it tantalizes. Rather than trying to overwhelm with information, instead, it refuses to say anything, which induces curiosity. Far more can be said by remaining politely poker-faced and inviting speculation. Having said that, I would also add that such a poster attests to several things already. One, it is about aviation. Definitely. Two, it is definitely a wistful sort of film, not in the vein of Ghost in the Shell, which is all cyber punk; this one looks nostalgic, old school. CGI will be taking a backseat here. Three, it's attempting to straddle arty and commercial. In other words, it is tailored for the young movie going crowd. The plot, I suspect, won't be hard to follow at all, and there will be humorous bits.

All guesses of course. I have not watched it yet, and there is only a miserable short trailer out. I wonder if they'll be bringing in this to Singapore, this and Miyazaki's new film... At any rate, a pretty poster, and it says a lot. Really.