Many say one of the inherent flaws of the Filipino is the crab-mentality we practice. Too often Pinoys pull fellow Pinoys down out of spite or envy. In my view, worse than crab mentality is the belief many Pinoys have that we just are never going to be good enough or smart enough compared to everyone else out there in the world. And this cannibalistic mindset sadly has become very apparent in how local distributors love to dumb stuff down thinking we will only appreciate things if they do so.
Mother Needs to Feed.It is a sad but true fact.
Some local movie distributors either believe the Filipino audience is way too stupid or too dumb to truly appreciate a movie and try to make their posters "better" in the mislead belief their "artistic ability" will make the movie more interesting.
I complained loudly about this some time ago when
Pioneer defaced the Silent Hill movie into a
horrible mess of chicken wire fences, monster zombies and going as far as giving the lead a gun.
Now, more movies are suffering the same stupid treatment.
Ethan Hawke's new movie
DAYBREAKERS is one of them.
The movie has mankind and vampirekind in a new world with humans being herded as livestock for the vampires. The first poster was a teaser on the vampire angle. Simple but it works. The second poster wanted to touch on the fact that in many ways the plot reminds one of Matrix. So in the second poster, we have a much more sci-fi feel, which frankly makes me smile. It homages the feel of Matrix and injects it with a dose of Gattaca.
Some GENIUS out there saw these and thought, "Oh the Filipino cannot appreciate too much beauty and intelligence in the posters. We have to help them understand it is a vampire movie." So what we end up with is this horrible mess:
Seriously, WHAT THE FRAK is wrong with them. Why on EARTH is this piece of infantile photoshopping the standing poster for what actually sounds like a cool original vampire movie?
It gets worse, my friends.
Heath Ledger's last film is soon to be released. Terry Gilliam's
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a spectacularly mind-bending film which Heath Ledger was working on at the time of his untimely demise. In order to complete the movie, Colin Farrel, Jude Law and Johnny Depp were also tapped to portray the character originally played by Heath Ledger. So part of the confusion may lie in the fact that four guys portray a single role in the movie.
Some of the earlier posters for the film were vague, but still aesthetically attractive.
The later posters tried to address the many roles and actors while still hinting at the surreal atmosphere of the film.
But of course, the local distrubtors still felt "they could do a better job." This is their horrific masterpiece:
Seriously. Can someone out there who actually KNOWS the people behind these poster changes please drown whoever was in charge of these changes?!?! The Filipino deserves better. Seriously better. This is the same audience that can appreciate movies like Schindler's List and has numerous
fandoms held dear to them.
WE ARE NOT TOO DUMB TO APPRECIATE THE ORIGINAL POSTERS.And no, we don't want our international films being made to look like local ones either. So please, just stop. Give us back our better posters.
