Film Analysis: Inception

The movie posters mainly serve the needs of the movie makers, whose ultimate purpose is to popularize the movie. To create a successful movie poster, designers need to go deeper into them. Therefore, they occasionally design several posters for the same movie. The two posters I am studying are for a science fiction movie "Inception,” which may appear to be a little bit analogous in their overall mood, but quite different in colors, fonts, various codes they comprise, etc. The first poster is a popular movie cliché – a silhouetted loner, who is also the main character of the movie, viewed from behind and placed in the center so that he immediately grasps the attention of the viewer. We can see Leonardo DiCaprio holding a gun in his right

It pictures ruining skyscrapers with the dust coming out of them indicating an inevitable disaster. Right in front of the falling giants, we can see ant-sized people again in formal clothing, standing on the very edge of the coast, watching the landfall and holding guns as well. So, we may assume, no matter what kind of weapon they have, they are forceless against the uncontrollable power of the nature. The camera angle is very appropriate I guess, as it emphasizes, even more, the power contradiction human versus nature by exhibiting how different they are in size. Water covering the lower half of the poster does not exemplify the same thing as in the poster of the loner. In this respect, it highlights the insoluble situation and the building on the farther background, falling directly into the water gives the feeling that the catastrophe is much closer than it appears to be. All in all, one of the main differences between the two posters is that the second one gives a lot more piece of information than the loner’s one as it provides action and even drama and the further development of the plot is getting slightly

However, in the loner’s poster, the letters are sort of invisible and so that the whole attention goes to the loner. Whereas in case of the second poster, it is the opposite, the title is attractively red, so, it is the first thing we focus on. Also, in both posters, the title is the biggest text. The two posters contain textual codes as well, which are located at the top of the posters. “Your mind is the scene of the crime” is utilized in the loner’s poster. This one suggests the reader that every action is going to be connected to the mind and implies that everything will happen on the basis of human consciousness. Nevertheless, the tagline of the poster with ruins, “the dream is real,” implies the dreams’ relation to reality or so to say illusion of being perceived as real. These taglines do not symbolize something specific. Vice versa, they are quite ambiguous but this is exactly how they are meant to be since their function is to attract more audience. The text referring to Christopher Nolan, “From the director of the dark knight” notifies that his previous movie was successful enough. So they use this fact as well to make the movie more popular. The same thing is in case of the main actor. The actors’ list is provided in the second poster but DiCaprio’s name is much bigger in size in comparison to other actors’ names. However, in the first