The 5 Most Unintentionally Hilarious New Movie Posters

5

Stalingrad Takes Russian Indifference to the Extreme

Action movies have conditioned us to associate an actor's indifference toward devastating destruction with badassedness, rather than, you know, being a soulless shell of a human being. Combine this trend with the Russian people's legendary inability to give a single shit and the result is the poster for Stalingrad, in which a giant plane is set to crash just above the scene and not one of the eight actors is even looking at it. Some men just don't care to watch the world burn.

Columbia Pictures
"Highest grossing" doesn't include shirtless Putin horse videos.

This is really some next-level stuff. Stalingrad takes the characters' mindsets from "I'd rather be doing something else" to "I will actually do something else as the world falls apart around me, just watch." For instance, this lady is waiting for her bus to arri- hold on, is that guy playing a piano?

Columbia Pictures
"I'm Russian. Haven't we established that we don't give a fuck by now?"

Look at his face. He's clearly going "So Adrien Brody played the piano in the safety of a studio while bombs were falling all the way outside? Wow, that's so badass. No, seriously, tell me more." Also, the extended version of the poster gives us a better look at the girl in blue in the back, and it turns out she's just sitting on some luggage, looking kinda unimpressed with all the destruction.

Columbia Pictures
Or with the guy who's clearly trying to fight the fire by pissing on it.

4

X-Men: Days of Future Past Is Filled With Weird Poses

The X-Men franchise is a never-ending source of imaginative concepts, cool characters, and deeply, deeply stupid movie posters. And guess what: They have no intention of changing that. For instance, marvel at this MC Escher drawing made into flesh:

20th Century Fox
"Isn't Charles supposed to be the one with the fucked up spine?"

Why are Magneto's legs facing one way and his torso facing the other? His head matches the direction of his legs, so why is he in that horribly uncomfortable position? Also, how? Seriously, stand up and try to do what he's doing. You can't, because you aren't an abomination of nature.

Meanwhile, Wolverine's poster posture almost looks normal, until you realize he's not in the air.

20th Century Fox
SPOILERS for the Bollywood dance number at the end.

So ... is he just standing with one foot up? That looks less like Wolverine jumping into an attack and more like one of Hugh Jackman's Broadway characters finishing up a pirouette.

And finally, there's young hair-having Professor X doing his dramatic mind-reading stance ...

20th Century Fox
Or prepping for a really dramatic fart.

... which, when combined with his casual outfit, just looks like he's taking an important phone call.

"Goddamn paparazzi. Can't a man order cocaine and hookers in peace?"

3

Romantic Films Don't Understand How People Lie Down

Lying down with a romantic partner is usually either a struggle for control of the sheets or a motion to lock parts together. Consequently, beds are designed to comfortably fit the length and width of a couple of humans. When you lie down with another person, your feet should be relatively close to one another's, but apparently this small fact never came up when the (clearly extraterrestrial) designers of the posters for The Fault in Our Stars and Endless Love were researching human mating customs.

20th Century Fox, Universal Studios
"Sir, we believe their genitalia to be located in their nasal regions."

Endless Love is a little bit closer to the mark, and almost looks normal ... until you look at the rest of the photo below. For this to make sense, it's like they arranged two beds in an L shape and decided to go from there, as if it would affect their sexual feng shui.

Universal Studios
"He hums the Tetris theme every time we make endless love."

And speaking of lying down and baffling movie poster decisions, check out the French and American posters for Jeune & Jolie (Young & Beautiful) and see if you can spot the subtle difference:

Wild Bunch
Mrs. Pitt is looking rather buff lately.

Yes, the American one cropped out a tiny portion of the dude's back, because of the different cultural sensibilities and all. In Taiwan, however, they are apparently all about the man-butt.

Wild Bunch
Or something-butt, since that is not a human neck.

2

Every Kids' Movie Shoves the Characters Right in Our Faces

It's nice to know who the characters are when you're looking at the poster, but recently kids' movies decided that this is all you need to know. Whether this is done out of pure laziness or to give the old and blind parents a better close-up view of whatever cutesy CGI face they'll have to stare at for the next 90 minutes, we're honestly not sure. As best as we can tell, this trend of taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall started with Smurfs 2.

Columbia Pictures
Smurfs 3's poster is going to be Papa Smurf tea-bagging the camera.

Later on, The LEGO Movie realized what a smart idea it was to take tiny characters and blow them up in size for everyone. They were even kind enough to include a one-word description of things you could expect in the movie. Why, you can almost tell it's about block people!

Warner Bros.
"PRODUCTPLACEMENT"

And yet it was that hashtag at the bottom that was the final bit of inspiration for the folks at How to Train Your Dragon 2. They took one look at that and collectively determined, "What's another obnoxious Internet thing? Oh, right. Selfies." Because the world needs more of these:

DreamWorks Animation
How is the "They ride fucking dragons!" part not the main selling point here?

1

Maleficent Is Playing Peekaboo

Maleficent is the upcoming film that was greenlit solely on the fact that Angelina Jolie's facial proportions sorta resemble those of an old-time Disney villain. That's the entire pitch, hook, and plot synopsis for this movie. As such, it's not surprising that most of the marketing materials consist solely of close-ups of Jolie's face staring at you, but apparently the designers felt they needed to provide some variation and decided to get creative with it.

By which we mean: photograph the same thing from another angle.

Walt Disney
Wait, look at her arm. Again with the damn selfies?

Why is she bent over like that? Are the horns really that heavy? Or is this just a result of Angelina Jolie's spinal column starting to finally age? We can only imagine that she was bent over picking something up, and the poster designers startled her.

No, wait, she's twerking?

The other possibility is that maybe the photographers had the angle wrong. She was standing up straight the whole time, and some moron intern just didn't know how to hold a camera.

This is more of a "Take the picture already, I have 3,742 adopted kids to pick up from school" pose.

Wait, no, we've got it! She was practicing her swing! Those magical forests are the best training grounds for the Masters.

We'd be all over a Caddyshack/Maleficent crossover, provided Bill Murray was down.