Thursday
Aug212008
Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 10:18PM New 'Max Payne' Posters Could Use a Smile
I'm not madly in love with these new posters for
Max Payne.
I get the dark, moody color palette - after all, the
video game was like that, too - but I think I'm over the combo of black, white,
and red for a while (says the guy with the black, white, and red website). I
don't think these are anywhere near as cool as
the off-center shot we saw emerge
from Comic Con last month. That was hip.
These are...OK. They fit the series of posters, they
kind of tell their own story, but they're pretty similar and they're certainly
not spectacular. I expected more at this point. Plus, what's with
Mark Wahlberg doing the Charlie Brown walk of
dejection? Head down, shoulders slumped back...Is it just me?
Reader Comments (6)
No it's not just you but, beyond the Charlie Brown pose, the Max Payne posters most closely resemble the UK ones for Shoot 'Em Up - with some added Photoshop snow, and all the style taken out. Let's face it (if you'll pardon the pun), however much "work" Clive Owen's had done, he's still got an "interesting" set of features which work well when photographed at odd angles. Wahlberg, on the other hand, looks like a grumpy lump of dough with toothache...
The pose is the style of the game.
Max Payne has just had his wife and daughter killed so there would be something intensely wrong with him if he were smiling.
Wahlberg, being the grumpiest kid on the block, is the perfect choice for the role.
And he sure is reluctantly angelic! You reluctant killer, you! I can hear a choir of cherubim singing as he reluctantly exacts his awesome revenge!
I hope they lose some of the violence from the game. It just got really repetitive and Payne's redemption was always more interesting. Probably won't, because they want to appease the fan base, but the structure of the story was always solid. At least in the first game.
I couldn't guess as Behind Enemy Lines is the only movie by John Moore that I've seen before and that really gives no hint of his leanings in that department.
Max Payne was one of the first games with real cinematic ambition but the gameplay was very repetitive as it centered completely around a then cool graphics engine.
Mark Wahlberg has shown a lot of potential in roles as angry avenger which weren't really developed such as Four Brothers and The Departed so I hope they give him more time to play out his anger, which is apparently very real.
I wouldn't mind if they do a lot of slow motion gunplay, also.
I'm not sure yet how I feel about the movie, as it seems the music theme is missing from the trailers, and Mark just doesn't really fit the character (at first glance), but I do enjoy the whole idea of the, sort of, angels of death idea. They "help" him kill people, and in the back of these 2 posters he has wings himself, making his fight more righteous in the name of heaven, which is interesting. I really like the "bridge-wings" in the second one...