Best movie posters of 2017

There have been some incredible pieces of marketing art released in 2017.

Teaser posters are generally where you find designers’ best work, before the demands of the studios – and the stars – rear their heads. So look past the garish one-sheet for the ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ sequel to this mixtape-inspired first look, with real hand-drawn pen-and-ink charm – it’s a genius bit of design given how heavily the movie draws on music.

It’s not hard to make Aubrey Plaza look good, but this sumptuous, Instagram-inspired poster for her stalker movie is devilishly handsome. Other movies have flirted with social media styles (most notably ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ with its fetching QR code look) but this gets a big ‘Like’ from us. Get it? Because on social media, a ‘like’ is… never mind.

Even in a banner year for Stephen King, ‘The Dark Tower’ bombed – but if the movie was half as captivating as this first teaser poster, maybe it would have found more of an audience. Neatly symbolising the inverse worlds of the story, it crafts an alternative universe Empire State Building from the negative space of our world. Oh, and it works upside down as well.

There’s lots to admire about this elegant Spielberg poster: the era-sensitive Helvetica font, the fact that the two biggest movie stars in the world don’t even have to show their faces, and the fact that the horizontal steps on the poster also look like a redacted document – perfectly in keeping with the themes of the movie. And when you realise the poster depicts the steps of the Supreme Court, it turns a good poster great.

This horrendously effective poster for horror thriller ‘Get Out’ has been stripped all the way back from its key art until all that remains is the movie in essence: fear and helplessness. The simple black and white colour highlights the starkness of the image, and Daniel Kaluuya’s expression does all the heavy lifting. You want to know more.

Everyone loves a ’70s throwback, and this IMAX special for ‘Kong: Skull Island’ casts us right back to the movie’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ era, but with the beast himself taking the Marlon Brando role. After this and the stylish ‘Godzilla’ posters from 2014, we can only hope the creative is quite as on point when Kong meets the King of the Monsters in 2020.

At once both numbingly mundane and freakishly unbalanced, this vertiginous poster for the latest weirdfest from director Yorgos Lanthimos is right on the money – as if hospital rooms weren’t already sterile enough. It’s the balance between dark and light that hints at something otherworldly and sinister, and it’s another winner from Lanthimos and Farrell – 2015’s poster for ‘The Lobster’ was also brilliant.

This poster was a pretty good indicator of what to expect from the ‘Thor’ threequel: it’s punky, punchy and bright – and it’s a world away from the dusty old posters of ‘Thor’ adventures been and gone. Really we’re just happy to see Hulk – and his trademark green – banish the standard ‘orange and blue’ colour schemes to the design dustbin.

What’s classier than a Paul Thomas Anderson film set in the world of high fashion starring Daniel Day-Lewis with a cut-glass accent? How about this fancy-ass poster, complete with gorgeous script font, sparing watercolour strokes and style by the stitch-load? Put this on your wall and elevate yourself by at least eight social classes overnight.

What comes at night, exactly? That’s all part of the appeal of this tremendously sparse horror one-sheet – whatever is lurking in that night certainly has the dog spooked, therefore you should probably be on edge too. Extra points too for the simple title font and the increasingly unreadable type – if the poster is drawing you in closer, it’s doing its job.