Amber Simmons is a writer and web content strategist. Subscribe to her blog. Or, you can just drop her a line.
Call me crazy, but I don’t understand the intentions behind the poster for the upcoming film, Across the Universe. When I saw this poster the other day while standing in line to watch Transformers, I leaned over to my husband and asked, “What is that? Is it a movie about two teachers that fall in love?”
The woman behind me snickered. “I don’t know,” she said, “but that’s as good a guess as any. I thought it was some kind of Adam and Eve story.”
The apple has two major cultural significances for me: the shiny red apple for the teacher on the first day of school, and the dreaded apple that ruined humankind forever, given to Adam by Eve. When I think of apples in a symbolic context, in the context it might acquire within a movie’s narrative, I’m assuming one of these two themes.
But upon watching the movie trailers, the movie appears to have nothing to do with teachers or original sin. It appears to be a movie about a couple of star-crossed lovers in the 60’s.
So what’s with the splattered apple on the movie poster?
I concede that it might not be an apple. It might be a strawberry, which doesn’t have any cultural significance at all as far as I know. But then why use it? The entire point of using symbols is that they trigger something within the viewer that we can rely upon: they conjure up the mythologies that the designer wants to elicit in the viewer. Once we begin using random imagery that means nothing but looks interesting, we become decorators, not designers.
Of course, it is still possible that the significance of the image is only discernible if you’ve seen the movie. But if that’s the case, it still doesn’t do its job, because it doesn’t make me want to see the movie. It confuses me. It sends me mixed signals. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think or feel, making the poster a complete failure.
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July 20th, 2007
I have seen the trailer for this movie, too, though this is the first time I’ve seen a poster. Weirdly, the poster doesn’t reflect the mood, style, or palette they went with for the trailer at ALL. And… yeah… fruit in space…? (Looks like a strawberry to me.)
“All you need is love”, being a Beatles line, conjures up the 60s stuff, I guess, but the rest of it is totally out to lunch. That poster makes it look all cosmic and far out and lovey dovey, and as I recall from the trailer, there’s a helluva lot more sturm und drang in the film.
Definite design failure.
July 20th, 2007
It looked like a heart to me. …and reminded me of The Fountain posters; which are equally confusing
July 20th, 2007
In my defense, when I first saw the movie poster there must have been a small child standing in front of it so that I couldn’t see that the fruit in question comes to a point at the bottom, in which case it rather does resemble a strawberry or a heart…with foliage…
Nevertheless, I still think it’s a terrible poster, and would love to hear some sort of rationale from the designer as to how s/he arrived at this decision.
July 23rd, 2007
There’s a backstory to the poster. See http://www.cinematical.com/2007/06/14/new-poster-for-across-the-universe/
July 23rd, 2007
Hey Brian, thanks for the link. I’m still not sure I get it though–he says the strawberry was part of the original design, but my question is, why? What’s the significance?
July 24th, 2007
If you watch the trailer, the movie title shown at the end has the “strawberry” in place of the “o” in “Across.” I presume that “Strawberry Fields Forever” is also part of the music track. That’s the only connection I can imagine. And now that I’ve watched the trailer, I think I’ll skip the movie. Too much plot puree.
August 1st, 2007
it’s an effing strawberry.. you know stawberry fields forever.. remember the beatles?? because this movie has nothing to do with the beatles..
August 3rd, 2007
If you saw the trailer and know anything at all about the Beatles you would know that the STRAWBERRY represents the song Strawberry Fields Forever. I can understand initially how one could question the poster design but it becomes quite obvious what the poster symbolizes once you have seen the trailer. I, for one, am extremely excited to see the film and feel as though the poster represents the whimsy/out there appeal of the movie and for those of you who are willing to dismiss it because you “don’t get” the advertising then you are missing out and in my opinion are incredibly closed minded.
August 3rd, 2007
I think we’re all in agreement that is indeed an effing strawberry and that the tenuous connection between the strawberry splattered across the galaxy is a weak and lazy reference to Strawberry Fields Forever. Got it. Beatles. Right. And yet, a strawberry != a field of strawberries, and why on earth should the strawberry be splattered across the universe?
There’s no unification between ideas. There’s no narrative. It’s kind of a cop out, really. Though I’m amused that my thinking the poster sucks has aroused such animosity!
August 5th, 2007
The Long “T” also evokes The Beatles: Their logo on Ringo’s bass drum has the same “T,” both Past Masters records use the same effect, as well as the dreadful Beatles 1 record. I think the poster works with the unconscious pulling together cultural references that work with a certain subset of folks. I saw the trailer. It’s a blunt instrument. Maybe the movie will be better.
August 5th, 2007
Dude, it’s a freakin’ strawberry. Across the Universe is a musical that uses songs by the Beatles, “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a song by the Beatles. The movie gets its title from a Beatles song as well (Across the Universe). If you watch the trailer, you see the main character, Jude, does some art that has strawberries dipped in red paint (pic of it here, sorry about how small it is: http://us.ent3.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/
hv/photo/movie_pix/columbia_pictures/across_the_universe/
jim_sturgess/across1-th.jpg ) Also, on the movie’s website (http://www.acrosstheuniverse.com/)
they have clips of the actors singing some of the songs from the movie, one of them happens to be “Strawberry Fields Forever” That’s why there’s a strawberry on the poster.
August 5th, 2007
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809233810/photo/970424826
There’s a larger picture of Jude (Jim Sturgess) with the strawberries.
August 5th, 2007
Haha that’s awesome; thanks for posting that.