Yesterday the first teaser poster for Star Trek into Darkness was released.
Immediately it reminded me of a painting that I've seen reproduced countless times, mainly on book covers for classic Gothic novels. That dark, almost-silhouetted figure surveying the world beneath his feet, almost certainly Benedict Cumberbatch's as-yet unidentified villain, is strongly reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's The Wanderer above Fog and Water.
It's an image that has become synonymous with the Romantic movement that shaped the European arts in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries. It depicts a solitary figure observing the sublime beauty of the natural world, and possibly implying a superhuman mastery of it. Unsurprising, then, that my earliest memory of it was on the cover of a cheap edition Mary Shelley's Frankenstein – that classic tale about the man who's reach exceeded his grasp and was made to suffer the consequences. It's obviously been alluded to on purpose by the Star Trek poster, and perhaps tells us something about the maniacal tendencies of the film's villain.
Salvador Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross was definitely alluded to by the poster for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Two saviours of humanity, steeply looking down at the world, arms outstretched.
You might scoff, thinking it's just a superficial resemblance, but religious iconography has always lent a special power to the Superman mythos. After all, the Man of Steel's birth name is Kal-El. The suffix 'El' in Hebrew means 'of God', and forms the basis of many familiar names, including those of important angels sent by God on missions – Gabriel and Raphael – and of course, more mundane names like Daniel. If you were wondering, Kal-El roughly translates as the 'voice of god', and if you still aren't convinced, Marlon Brando, as his father Jor-El, delivered the following lines in Richard Donner's original movie, firmly underscoring the parallel:
They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son.
In retrospect, this poster revealed just how much Singer's sequel would embrace the long-running metaphor. In the final act of Superman Returns, Brandon Routh's Superman performs the ultimate Christ-like act by sacrificing himself to save the rest of humanity, lifting a landmass entirely created out of Kryptonite into space (yes, that was the plot). After releasing it from his fingertips, he spreads his arms and assumes the iconic pose, before hurtling back to earth, where he dies before an inevitable resurrection.
One of Spielberg's biographers once revealed that Universal Pictures explicitly marketed his most personal movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, using Christian imagery. Even though the culturally Jewish Spielberg has long denied that the film is a Christian parable, the poster below blatantly alludes to Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, which forms part of the elaborate fresco adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The painting depicts the creation of the first man by God, reaching down from the heavens. The poster depicts the fingers of E.T. meeting those of a child across the stars. Interestingly, the composition has E.T.'s hand on the left-hand side, where Adam sits in the painting. Does that mean something? Probably not. It's more likely it was the result of the studio wishing to tap into a certain demographic.
Okay, so this one's much less subtle. It's a poster that doesn't subtly draw symbolic power from the existing work of art; it's more of a straightforward parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper – and not even a good one at that. Predictably, it has leading man Stallone sitting where Jesus sits in the original, but surely it misses an opportunity by placing the unpredictable yet trustworthy Dolph Lundgren in Judas's chair. Surely, that's where you'd photoshop the bad guy?
Okay, so this one's a bit of a cheat. It's not really a movie poster but a scene from a movie. It's the critical flashback when V escapes from' Larkhill Resettlement Camp', after months of indescribable suffering. Emerging from the flames, endowed with superhuman abilities, V triumphantly holds his arms aloft, aping the illustration 'Fire' from William Blake's poem The Gates of Paradise.
It seems fitting given V's evident love of literature that the film should reference the work of visionary William Blake. And perhaps there is no more fitting sentiment at this moment for 'the man in room number V' than the following lines from the poem itself:
And in depths of my dungeons
Closed the Father and the Sons
But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die.
Edvard Munch's expressionist masterpiece The Scream depicts a figure amidst a violent landscape. In keeping with the Expressionist manifesto, the world around the figure reflects this inner turmoil – the sky stained a furious orange and the sea writhing in pain. There's a longstanding ambiguity over whether the sexless figure is screaming or, in fact, hearing another person scream, holding their hands up to their ears to block out the piercing cry.
That face, twisted by pain, was the inspiration for the Ghostface killer in Wes Craven's Scream series. Blank, unchanging, it effectively terrorised Sidney Prescott and her ever-diminishing group of friends across four films. But Munch's presence can perhaps more poignantly be traced in another suburban tale of incipient madness, in which the main character is pursued by forces both internal and external. That film, of course, is Chris Columbus's Expressionist masterpiece Home Alone:
The poster above is riddled with the same ambiguity that plagues Munch's original. Is Kevin McCallister screaming because his home is under siege by external forces, in the shape of the Slippery Bandits, or is he really tormented by the stark realisation that his parents have abandoned him at Christmas? (Maybe not.)
If you can think of anymore, let us know in the comments down below.
Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. His face resembles something from Picasso’s Blue Period. And you can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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