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Hyper-minimalist movie poster redesigns are everywhere. They're cool and all, but they could use a makeover of their own. Erica Henderson is here to help. For the last year the cartoonist. and animator has been designing her own movie posters based on the defining moments of her favorite flicks with lush, detailed, and fantastic results.
Inspired by a conversation about the 1970s drama Phantom of the Paradise, Henderson's series "started off as a list of movies that I think are smarter than people generally give them credit for," Henderson told WIRED. Since then, she said, "the theme has more or less broadened into 'movies that I think are worth talking about.'" Henderson's current comics series, Subatomic Party Girls, started in May, but she's still managed to keep the posters coming: so far, she's covered The Princess Bride, Tremors, Alien, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Starship Troopers, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Die Hard, Brazil, Videodrome, and, yes, Phantom of the Paradise. (You can buy the movie prints here.)
In each image, Henderson tries to capture a single, definitive scene or idea from the movie. So far, she said, most have been easy, but a few have left her struggling – most recently, RoboCop and The Silence of the Lambs. "With RoboCop, I'm not certain how to convey in a single still image a man fighting to reclaim his humanity, or rather how to do it differently than that one perfect frame in the movie when RoboCop is fighting ED-209 and there's a closeup of one of his eyes fearfully peering out from behind his broken visor," she said. "With Silence of the Lambs, I know I want to talk about power, because so much of that movie is about power, but I'm also trying to get down the nuances of [Hannibal] Lecter and [Clarice] Starling's relationship through the movie."
Next, she's considering tackling David Cronenberg's The Fly – but, she said, "as this goes on, the process has become less about rationally going down a list and crossing them off and more just about obsession."
Images courtesy Erica Henderson
