I saw the new, and presumably final, one-sheet for X2 and instead of thinking, “God I have GOT to see this movie!” I instead couldn’t help but sigh and rub my forehead in exasperation at the design.

My main contention stands with why Halle Berry’s face was more prominent than the rest of the cast. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is up top as well but his face seems primarily hidden in the shadows, whilst to his left an annoyingly smirking Halle Berry hogs ¼ of the poster’s space.

If I ask the question why, as in “Why is Halle Berry’s face more visible than any other cast members?” the simple answer is because her profile has been raised since the original film, as she is now an Oscar-winner and that higher-profile will, in theory, attract a larger audience to the film. But that’s more of a bullshit answer. In reality, I don’t believe that Fox needs to convince people to see X2 by pushing the fact Halle Berry’s in the movie. It’s different, for example, when Ben Affleck takes high priority on the JAY AND SILENT BOB poster. J&SBSB was admittedly a hard sell to mainstream audiences and the production needed any extra star power Affleck could provide.

Audiences will flock to X2 because it is the sequel to X-MEN, one of the more successful and better-made comic-book films around, NOT because Halle “This Moment Is So Much Bigger Than Me” Berry co-stars.

Hugh Jackman is up top because his Wolverine is the centerpiece of this movie; the glue that holds it all together. Simply put, Halle Berry is up top because she wanted to be. Because she stomped her foot and demanded her agent make sure she was top billing.

Let’s face it – Halle Berry was never particularly pleased to be a part of the X-MEN production. She made her feelings known during the first film with her notorious comments about how a character like Storm was a representation of how there weren’t any quality roles for African-Americans, and hasn’t exactly zipped her lips the second go-round. (Funny though how she seems more than willing to play another leather-clad superhero in CATWOMAN, a film for which she’ll receive a much higher paycheck…) I will credit her with being a model actress in that she’s shown up for work and been more than professional on-set, doing what she has to do and etc. It’s clear though that this is something she clearly feels she’s above. Would she have returned for a sequel if she were not contractually obliged (a contract she signed BEFORE her Oscar win)? I’d bet the Sampson farm that she’d be off doing FOXY BROWN or JINX: THE MOVIE or whatever other nonsense she wants to wrap herself up in.

Another question that remains to be seen is how many concessions producers and the studio made to Berry, and her character, when scripting the sequel. We all know Storm got a well-needed makeover, replacing that God-awful wig, and that’s not a problem but what happens when we start creating storylines for secondary and, quite honestly, mediocre characters just to fill the ego of the star in that role. If a storyline was concocted and/or tailored, not in the natural process of writing but, simply to satiate the expanding ego of one of the film’s stars, then are you compromising the quality of the project? If James Marsden wins an Oscar next year –- I know, I know, but stay with me here –- and becomes the second-coming of Tom Cruise, will X3 follow the wacky adventures of Cyclops? Will a giant Marsden head top the X3 poster? Will the world come crashing to a halt forcing a team of newly-dubbed “terranauts” to bore to the core of the Earth, drop a nuclear bomb and restore motion to this floating piece of rock?

Also a thorn in my side is the lack of Famke Janssen. Reader Brandon McKee brought up a good point in an e-mail when he said, “Famke Jannsen isn't on the poster AT ALL? What's that all about? It's not like she told the director/exec producer/co-writer to kiss her Danish ass. Kelly Hu isn't even listed on the credits in the poster but she gets her face on there.”

I don’t have a problem with Kelly Hu being one of the top characters, primarily because she’s seen as the film’s core villain. True she’s henchman to the REAL villain General Stryker, played by Brian Cox, but she’s the sexy villain. Great an actor as he is, Brian Cox isn’t particularly as sexy or as menacing as Kelly Hu in that shot, and besides, his character is more of the pupper-master, the psychological villain.

All of this though has been amended though with a “Version B” that features more of the film’s characters like Jean Grey, Nightcrawler and Iceman, allowing for a little more space for everyone. But one thing that didn’t change, the main problem, was the giant head of Halle Berry that still looms over us.

Giant head placement is just part of the politics that goes into creating a movie poster. It’s not all about getting the best design that everyone is happiest with.

For example, when Sony Pictures held a poster design contest for RESIDENT EVIL, these were a few of the stipulations on the design:

“For posters that use images of cast members, you must include Milla Jovovich's image at least as large as any other cast member's image.

Michelle Rodriguez' image must be used if you use any cast member's image, other than Milla Jovovich, and Rodriguez' image must be at least as large as any other cast member's image.”

Those are just some of the silly politics that go into making a poster. Here’s a more generic list of don’ts for poster design:

1. No nudity or sexual activity
2. No gun to camera/no shooting to camera
3. No gun to victim/no shooting to victim
4. No reference to drugs/drug paraphenalia
5. No offensive language or gestures
6. No blood
7. No violence towards women
8. No cruelty to animals
9. No mutations/mutilations/cadavers
10. No excessive violence or brutality
11. No rape/molestations
12. No people on fire
13. No people in explosion/people blown out of explosion
14. No exploiting/capitalizing on rating (i.e., "R has never gone this far", "Banned in Boston")
15. No demeaning of religion, race or national origin

While these were rules specific to Sony/Columbia posters, you can bet every studio has something similar to this policy in place, including Fox and these rules influence every single poster that you see in our multiplex. Not that I want a movie poster with a guy on fire raping a nun while holding a gun to her bloody head. A good majority of those are common sense but I think on our end we often forget how much goes into creating a proposal, other than the actual creation.

I don’t mean to rail on the X2 production again (or poster design artists who I do feel often create legitimate pieces of art) because I think when the time comes, this poster will fade into obscurity while the strength of the film will live on. Plenty of great movies have had shitty posters, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a killer poster for a killer film? One devoid of gigantic heads sized appropriately according to preset stipulations? One where second-tier, supporting characters aren’t forced to the forefront just because they’re played by a newly-award-winning actresses? A boy can dream.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

A bit of a correction as many people wrote in and asked how I could’ve forgotten to add MASTER OF DISGUISE and SERVING SARA on the Worst Movies Bracket last week. A complete fuck-up on my part. Can’t believe I missed those two. I’m convinced MASTER could’ve gone all the way in some circles. I feel like a ref in the 49ers/Giants playoff game, making a dreadful non-call that decides the outcome of a game. I hide my head in shame.

Do comedians get sick of being funny? I interviewed Chris Rock and Bernie Mac this past weekend for HEAD OF STATE and neither one raised more of a chuckle out of me. Not that they couldn’t –- I think both are absolutely hilarious –- but they didn’t even try. Bernie was very talkative but very serious, only once lapsing into a “crazylikeamuhhfucka” and Chris was even more morose, not cracking one joke I can remember. I asked him if the moniker of “The Funniest Man in America” by TIME Magazine was a burden rather than a pleasure, he said it did tend to be a bit much, especially when he’s out promoting movies, the last few of which haven’t been all that successful and tend to raise doubts to his “title.” So do comedians “dumb it down,” so to speak, or just turn off the gag reflex? Affleck was ten times as funny as both Rock and Mac combined. Is he just better at playing the publicity game? Anybody in the comedy biz, feel free to throw in your two cents…

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