Stop-Loss poster
Wow is this poster for Stop-Loss incredibly bad. Not only does it not look like a movie poster (more like a Kid Rock album cover) but it strikes a completely different tone than the trailer that was released a while ago.
That trailer sold the movie as a story about a group of friends and the couple of them that were serving in the Army and who were being recalled because of stop-loss orders meant to lengthen service times and maintain troop levels. It showed the movie was about how the group dynamic played into the decisions those reluctant soldiers made whether to oppose the orders or not.
This poster, on the other hand, sells the movie as some sort of Dazed and Confused or American Graffiti-esque “group of friends hanging out and falling in love in small town America” flick. There’s a little military imagery at the top, but the primary sense I get from the one-sheet is that these characters are going to be drinking at the local bar and working on their cars while figuring out how to get laid. Really, really inconsistent with the brand the trailer first presented.
I get that they’re trying to not oversell the political stuff to the teens and 20 somethings the movie is targeting, but this is showing the movie to be an All-American romp and the trailer presented some serious issues being hashed out. Brand whiplash like this is not good. Not good at all.
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Comments
Wow, both of you bring up such excellent points, which to be honest I completely would have overlooked had I not read this. I first heard about this movie a couple of weeks ago, and to be honest I had no idea what our stop-loss policy was until I started looking into it! Bill, I completely agree with you, I don’t see this as “brand Whiplash” either. These are “dazing” and “confusing” times for us and I can’t even begin to imagine how young men and women who have had to deal with these issues must be feeling. You might want to check out the official site (www.stoplossmovie.com/soundoff) it has some really compelling videos sent in by young soldiers who have dealt with the issues at hand. Thank you guys for the insight definitely got me thinking 
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Hmm…interesting parallels in describing the film’s poster…
I don’t necessarily see it as “Brand whiplash,” however.
After all, these are dazing and confusing times for us all, let alone a young man grappling with the issues that the film seems to represent. It just doesn’t seem that outlandish to me??
As far as American Graffiti, you could even make the parallel between graffiti as an “unsightly damage or unwanted vandalism” and apply that to the phenomena of the Stop Loss policy…