Christopher Nolan has an impressive marketing team with serious promotional swagger when it comes to peaking people’s interests about a new movie of his coming out. You can’t deny it. In fact, majority of the time, you know who’s movie it is based on the posters and trailers without even needing to see the words “From the creator that brought you blah-blah-blah” to know it’s a Nolan film; you can tell just by the serious tone and the clean and simple design that it has his imprint on it. It basically bleeds “This new movie is so dark and sad and so different from all the other Nolan movies, you don’t even know.”
Mhmmm.
The new Dunkirk poster that was released this month is no different, but it does beg the question: Will Dunkirk really be as intense and moving as the new poster and trailers suggest?
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Because his previous films were completely unique stories, each with different themes – the same look and feel, however – the audience went in to the theatre blind, ready to see something they’ve never seen before. Inception and Interstellar had twists and turns the audience didn’t see coming. With Dunkirk, we know what to expect. We’ve seen countless WWII movies prior to this, and of course, most of us know the history without having to do a quick Wikipedia search.
With that being said, Nolan has to grab the typical movie-goer’s attention somehow, right? It’s evident in the first trailer that was released late last year, what with the ticking clock sound keeping us simultaneously anxious and just wishing it would end, juxtaposed with the quick-fired shots of scenes, which gave us a general idea of what to expect (sad, brooding, nervous feelings) without revealing too much. How could this movie possibly be any different from all the others? WWII movies and Nolan movies, alike.
The new poster is pretty, yes. It puts us right in the dirt with the main protagonist, Tommy played by Fionn Whitehead, whose eyes are just the right shade to match the giant letters in the very center of the poster and whose dark hair contrasts perfectly with the other few colors of the poster and the “Nolan niche”.
Nolan does a fine job of evicting tension through his posters and trailers, but with what we’ve seen so far it doesn’t seem like he can keep our attention for two hours straight once the movie hits in July. Obviously, Dunkirk will be gritty, but will it be any different than what we’ve already seen before? Will it be more than just a pretty face? Doesn’t look like it.
You can find Alyson on Twitter @alyjour when she’s not co-hosting the Squibardry podcast!