My Three Least Favourite Teams in the NHL

The NHL is a fairly big league. There are 32 teams split into two conferences of 16, each with two divisions of 8. That means there are a lot of teams to choose from when you’re trying to figure out a favourite team. Most people go local, meaning they root for a team located around where they’re from. That’s not the case for me.

The team I choose to root for is the Seattle Kraken. Now, I’m from Canada, about an hour and a half away from Toronto, so this choice of team has nothing to do with location. It has everything to do with the name. I would say my second favourite team right now is probably the Buffalo Sabres, which are actually closer to where I live than the Toronto Maple Leafs, the closest Canadian team. Then maybe the Colorado Avalanche or the Anaheim Ducks.

The thing about hockey is that no matter how many teams you like, there will always be teams that you dislike. For me, there are three teams that I dislike more than any of the other NHL teams. I wanted to take some time and explain why I dislike those three teams. I get that some people might not want more negativity thrown out there, but like most of my posts this is just something I feel I need to write. For my own sake.

The Edmonton Oilers

I don’t have much to go on for my dislike of the Edmonton Oilers. This one is just a gut reaction whenever I think about the team. They have a lot of players that I like, but that is not enough to get me to actually like the team. I like Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Stuart Skinner, and even Connor McDavid, to an extent. But then there’s also Evander Kane, a player that I outright hate.

The players aren’t really the issue with my dislike for Edmonton. Yes, I hate Evander Kane. Yes, I think Connor McDavid might not be the best player in the league because his effort is only there for a small amount of the game. I can’t deny his talent, though. These players are not my issue.

The issue I have with Edmonton is the same issue I have with Toronto, except that I don’t live near Edmonton. I grew up a Toronto fan until I fell off hockey when I went to university. That meant the oversaturation of the media in Canada with Toronto Maple Leafs coverage never really bothered me in the same way it does other people. However, as a fan of Seattle now, when I am trying to watch a feed of a Seattle game, it typically comes from a western Canada market. Those Sportsnet feeds tend to focus all their attention on Toronto and Edmonton. The Toronto stuff has simply become a part of my life living near Toronto. I have no relevance to Edmonton, Edmonton has no relevance to me, so I don’t need to hear about the Edmonton Oilers every five minutes. This is what bothers me.

Add to that the fact that everyone thinks Connor McDavid is the greatest player to ever live, aside from Wayne Gretzky, and you have the same team being brought up in almost every hockey situation. It’s just the amount of hearing about Edmonton. That makes me hate Edmonton. if they weren’t talked about during every hockey broadcast as if they were the most important team in the world, aside from Toronto, I probably wouldn’t care. But they are, and I do, and I don’t like them. That’s that.

The Vegas Golden Knights

I have seen a lot of people complaining about the Vegas Golden Knights winning the Stanley Cup simply because the Vegas Golden Knights were brought into the NHL only six years ago. I have no problem with that. My team is the Seattle Kraken. They came in two years ago. If I had a problem with a new team winning the cup, I wouldn’t be rooting for a new team.

My issue with the Vegas Golden Knights is how they treat their players. Don’t get me wrong, it was a winning formula, but that doesn’t mean they don’t treat their players poorly. The team has no loyalty to anyone that is a part of the team. They will get rid of a good player, a fan favorite, if that means they can get a different good player who might be a bigger name. They are a team who has been around for six years and currently only has five players from that first season.

The misfits, as they were called, as they are still called, are mostly not even there anymore. As soon as the team won the Stanley Cup, they traded Reilly Smith, one of the original misfits. There was that whole debacle with Marc-André Fleury, including his agent sending out a picture of the goaltender with a sword in his back, which led to Marc-André Fleury being traded for basically nothing. And it’s not just the misfits that get this treatment. As soon as Max Pacioretty got injured, he was shipped off for nothing to Carolina. The upper management is ruthless and has created an atmosphere where no one feels safe signing a contract in Vegas. (I’ve actually heard from someone who knows Logan Thompson that no one really feel safe in Vegas because of how they are so willing to just get rid of players quickly.) For a business that acts like a player’s loyalty to a team is important above almost anything else, it would be nice to see reciprocation. Vegas doesn’t have that reciprocation.

I do feel it’s important to mention that, although I hate Vegas for how they treat the players, I appreciate the showmanship that they’re bringing into the league. Their pre-shows are setting a standard that most NHL teams should strive to achieve. The All-Star game and skills competition that was held in Vegas was far more entertaining than most that I’ve seen. And that castle that they have at the top of their arena is a special something that you don’t really get at other arenas. I appreciate that stuff, but I hate how the team is run, which makes me hate the team.

The Boston Bruins

Oh, look at this guy, a former Leafs fan who hates the Boston Bruins. Well, guess what? When the Leafs fans started hitting the Bruins was 2011. I stopped watching the Leafs in 2009. Take that!

My hate for the Boston Bruins started two years after that, because of their fans during the playoffs. But to fully understand, we have to go back a little further. We must go back to two weeks before the playoffs began. That was when the Boston marathon took place in 2013, and if you remember that event, you may also remember that there was a bombing. It was a big tragedy that everyone knew about. Everyone probably still knows about it. The people of Boston came together in the aftermath with the phrase, “Boston strong.” They were telling people that even through the tragedy they were going to stay strong, they were going to overcome, they were going to persevere. It was a beautiful moment in the aftermath of a tragedy.

Two weeks later, we got the NHL playoffs. Boston won their first-round match up. Boston won their second-round match up. Boston won their third-round match up, and they made it to the Stanley Cup finals. The fans in the arena were shouting “Boston strong” through the entire playoff run. That is what made me hate the Boston Bruins.

I get that the city camr together after the tragedy of the bombing. This phrase showed how strong the city was, and how anybody who did something as horrific as that marathon bombing would not break the Boston people’s will. However, the phrase was not meant as a hockey cheer. It was not meant to say that your hockey team was going to be better than another hockey team. To bastardize the phrase in that way is to lessen the loss of the people who died in the bombing. I fucking hate that. It became a hockey chant. I fucking hate that Boston Bruins fans took such a meaningful phrase and a tragic moment and made it about a fucking Stanley Cup run. That they didn’t even win. They lost to Chicago in the finals.

I don’t hate the Boston Bruins because they beat another team in the playoffs or in the regular season. They’ve got good players. They’ve got Patrice Bergeron. They’ve got David Pastrňák. They’ve got Brad Marchand. They’ve got Charlie McAvoy. The team is good, or at least was until they lost half the players this off-season. But their fans ruined them. I hate the team because of their fans.

Those are my thoughts about the three teams that I dislike in the NHL. There are other teams that I’m not a fan of. And there are the teams that I like. But these three teams, for whatever reason, rub me the wrong way. Two of them, a little more obviously than the other one.

This post might’ve been a little too negative for some of the people who decide to open it up. I can understand that. A lot of it was just me ripping on teams, or their fans. I just wanted to write a little something about hockey. This is what came to mind. For those who did read it, I hope you enjoyed. Check out some of the other stuff I’ve written. I’ll see you next time.

My Bubly Flavour Journey - Coconut Pineapple

Alright. We’ve got some convenient timing here. I say convenient because my previous Bubly post was about the pineapple flavour. This one is quite similar. That’s because pineapple is part of it. I’m going from one pineapple flavour to another. I’m going to be writing about the all-new coconut pineapple Bubly.

Last summer, Bubly released a limited time apple flavour. If we had that flavour out right now, I would have it. I would write about it. It would probably be at the top of my list. That’s how much I liked it. I’m a little sad they didn’t bring it back this summer. Instead, we got the limited-edition coconut pineapple flavour. It’s pretty much what you would expect. There are hints of coconut in there and hints of pineapple.

This was not a flavour I ever wanted. Companies seem to be all about the coconut flavour this year. Coca-Cola had their Move flavour that they made with the help and name recognition of musician Rosalía. Tim Horton’s added a toasted coconut flavour to their Timbits. In all honesty, they might have had that flavour a long time ago and brought it back. Either way, it’s here now. And then Bubly decided to hop on that train and get some coconut into their most tropical flavour.

What you’ll notice if you grab a can of it is that the pineapple taste is a little more forward, but the coconut smell is a little more forward. Each flavour takes one of the senses. I’m all for the pineapple taste of it. As you may have seen in the previous post, I enjoy pineapple Bubly. It’s the coconut that I don’t quite like. For the most part, that’s okay because the taste is more pineapple. But there’s that hint of coconut that makes it a little worse.

The biggest issue with coconut pineapple Bubly is the aftertaste. Where you get the pineapple forward while drinking it, you get a massive coconut aftertaste. It’s a taste that lingers long after you finish drinking the water. Had that aftertaste not been there, this could have been one of the higher end Bubly flavours. It could have made for a refreshing summer drink. With the aftertaste, though, it’s not good. That aftertaste ruins your summer chill and, if you’re like me and don’t like coconut, leaves a lasting disappointment.

If I’m going to compare a Michael Bublé song to coconut pineapple Bubly, it’s going to have to be the cover of Quando, Quando, Quando he did with Nelly Furtado. Two musicians that, though from the same country, I’m left wondering why they decided to join together. The final product is fine, but I’m left with a lingering feeling of distaste about the combination I just got. I wouldn’t turn it off, but I would absolutely question why it was on.

My order of Bubly from the one I prefer to the one I dislike most goes peach, pineapple, watermelon, lime, coconut pineapple, cherry.

The Netflix Problems, from My Perspective

Netflix has been around for a long time. I’m not going to get too much into the history of Netflix because it’s not that relevant to what I want to discuss. They started out as mail order movie rental business, before shifting their entire model into a streaming service. That’s what Netflix is now: one of many streaming services, allowing people to watch movies or television shows when they want without having to dig through a massive collection of physical media releases. Let’s not get into the quality differences between streaming and physical media. What I want to discuss happened a little bit after Netflix moved to streaming.

The release of Lilyhammer in 2012 ushered in a new era of Netflix. They were now going to focus on original properties. They were going to create their own TV shows and movies to compete with television and theatrical films. They released shows such as House of Cards, Hemlock Grove, Orange is the New Black, and, later on, Stranger Things. This was meant to set Netflix apart from the other competing streaming services before those services started. Services like Disney+, Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and Tubi. However, the way Netflix went about this has only turned people against them.

Netflix found success in their early output. House of Cards gpot awards recognition. Movies like Beasts of No Nation were also getting critical acclaim. But when Amazon Prime Video came out with their own original programming, especially the movie Manchester by the Sea, Netflix begin to panic. They rapidly increased the number of movies and TV shows they put out, spending an insane amount of money on them, with no plan to properly recoup their funding. That’s where the problem was.

You see, if you’re putting all your money into making these new TV shows and new movies, you don’t have enough money to properly market all of them. Shows were being released to Netflix without anybody knowing they even existed, because no money was put into selling the shows. Many of them just showed up one day, people wondered what they were, and never watched them because they had no real idea. They never saw a trailer, they never saw a poster, they had never even heard the name spoken aloud. They had only seen one image and the title on their Netflix browsing menu.

This would be fine if it was one title, two titles, maybe three, but when it’s at least half the original catalogue of Netflix, there’s a problem. When Netflix started releasing numerous shows without any marketing, it was hard to continue the shows. Nobody watched them, which meant that no more money was going to go into them, because no money came in from people who watched them. It was a snake eating its own tail scenario. Netflix never invested in the shows, which meant audiences would not invest in the shows, which meant the shows were not worth investing money into from Netflix. Do you see what I mean?

This led to Netflix cancelling a lot of their shows before the shows had time to flourish. This was where the audience turned on Netflix. Netflix was one of the streaming platforms that heavily relied on binge watching. It’s still does. Most of the shows that get released on the platform have their entire seasons dropped at once. That might be convenient for people who want to watch an entire show without waiting. They can simply hit the next episode button and it will play. Netflix was a brand built on convenience, so it only makes sense that they would release shows in the most convenient way.

Yet, this binge-watching release schedule has only hurt Netflix in the long run. The way they have started to cancel shows has been very swift, very quick, and I don’t even have another word, but you can probably guess what I wanted to say. Some shows don’t even make it a week before being cancelled because people aren’t watching them. But it can be tough to watch a show when you don’t know it has been released, and when the platform is giving up on it after only a week. That might not even be enough time to find the show when it hasn’t been marketed.

I am a person who prefers week-to-week release schedules for television shows. There are a couple reasons for that. First, it gives people time to watch a TV show. Especially in the world of streaming platforms. A streaming platform isn’t going to release an episode one week, cancel the show, then not release the rest of the episodes. Well, they might not have before David Zaslav ended up in charge of Warner. Releasing something, anything, onto a platform is better than releasing nothing. If you release an episode, and it doesn’t do well, but you have five more episodes to release, you may find that it does better five weeks later.

Second, about that five weeks later bit, there can be buzz around the show later on. If the show is released on a week-to-week schedule, it allows people to sit with what just happened. They can talk to their friends about what happened. They have a whole week between episodes to ruminate on what happened, to look forward to what is going to happen, and to connect with the show in a way that they wouldn’t when rushing through all the episodes. If people connect more, and if they talk about it more, the show will more likely find popularity.

The Netflix model of releasing an entire season of a show at one time, or in two chunks a month apart, makes the show part of the collective cultural buzz for about a week at a time. If they were to release six episodes, one week apart for a month and a half, the show would take over people’s conversations for about that month and a half length. There would be more people watching along with the show at once, compared to when the entire season is just there to be watched at any time. People want to be part of the conversation, and the easiest way to do that is to extend the conversation. If something is released all at once, and they don’t watch it within the first three days, they typically give up on watching it around that time because they won’t be part of the conversation. It doesn’t matter at all anymore. They can watch it whenever they want. They just won’t be able to talk to other people about it in the same way as if they watched at the same time, or if the conversation was extended.

I feel like I’m writing in circles a little bit here. The point is this: Netflix has hurt itself by releasing on a binge model, because it doesn’t allow the show to grow in the same way it would over a week-to-week schedule. Netflix has hurt themselves by not investing in their own product to the point that, when they drop a show, people don’t know about it, so they don’t watch it. They did too much too soon, without taking the time to do it right. All because they were panicked when other streaming services started tapping into their market.

Now it looks like Netflix might be turning a slight corner. They are still going to have the same issue they had with original programming for the past five, ten years. But the other streaming services seem to be slightly pulling back on their own programming. Thanks to Zaslav paving the way, some of the streaming services are pulling their own original programming to license out to other services. And this is where Netflix can try and take some ground back.

Netflix is ubiquitous with streaming. When people think about streaming services, they typically think about Netflix. They think “what am I going to find on Netflix today?” They talk about Netflix and chill. Everyone knows that Netflix boom sound at the beginning of every Netflix original. If the other services aren’t going to keep their own original programming, Netflix might not have to produce quite as much as they have been. In fact, they could poach some of the licensed properties from the other streaming services and put them on their platform. How crazy would that be?

Netflix clearly has a problem. People have lost their faith in the streaming service that kind of pioneered the way for others. But maybe now that the other services are pulling back, Netflix also could, and that will allow an increased quality to their product which will bring people back. One can only hope.

I know I’ve been rambling through this post. I also know that people probably don’t care what I think about Netflix, about streaming services, about how shows are released, or marketing. I simply had some thoughts and wrote them out. I wanted to see if anyone felt the same way. Or just throw my thoughts out to the ether. Sometimes I just want to write, okay?

My Bubly Flavour Journey - Pineapple

It’s about damn time I got to another Bubly review. You know, one of those posts where I write about a specific flavour of Bubly as if you care what I think about one flavour of one brand of sparking water. I’ve already gone over lime, peach, cherry, and watermelon. Now it’s time for me to hit the halfway point by writing about pineapple.

This was one of the first flavours of Bubly I ever had. It was actually the second. I don’t know why I felt the need to say it was one of the first when I know it was second. When I first got into drinking Bubly, it was on a friend’s recommendation. Yes, I wanted some flavoured water with a fizz. But it was a friend who recommended Bubly. It was that same friend who recommended pineapple Bubly.

We had driven to a city about twenty minutes away from our own. Not too far. But we were headed to a marina to check out the fish, the lake, the boats, and all that sort of stuff. On our way out of that lakeside city, we stopped at two places. One was a local sub and taco shop. Weird combo, but good food. The other was a grocery store. He picked up a case of pineapple Bubly. I picked up a different flavour, which I have yet to write about. I drank one of mine. He drank one of his. Then we traded one for one because neither of us had tried the other flavours. And that’s when I had my first pineapple Bubly.

That brings us to today. I’ve got another can of Bubly next to me, ready to drink. The smell upon opening the can isn’t quite as strong as some of the other flavours. It’s still there. I can still easily tell what flavour I’m putting up to my mouth. But it’s not overwhelming. It’s a nice level of smell. It doesn’t linger. You get a whiff of it and then it’s gone. A scent on the wind. Literally on the wind. I’m outside.

The taste is mild. Again, it’s nothing too overwhelming. It tastes close enough to pineapple that, if I was blindfolded and tasting the ten flavours of Bubly, I’d be able to pick this one out from a lineup. And the flavour kind of sticks around. It’s not an aftertaste or anything. If I let the Bubly sit in my mouth, that flavour sticks around the whole time. It doesn’t dissipate like some of the others. That’s pretty good, I’d say. Though, it’s not that first sip of lime, where the taste got stronger. That was strange.

If there’s one issue with Bubly, which is something I’ve noticed through the past couple flavours, it’s that the tall cans have a slightly more can flavour. You can taste the can while drinking it. The pineapple Bubly is in a small can, so I don’t taste that as much. I’m getting a better taste of the Bubly itself. Maybe that’s just me, though. It could be.

Through the entire can of pineapple Bubly, it never really lost its flavour. It was consistent. How it tasted at the beginning was how it tasted at the end. I’m impressed by that. It tasted close enough to pineapple that I don’t have any complaints about it. Bubly isn’t about a strong taste. It’s about having a taste of some sort so that you’re not just drinking plain, sparkling water. The taste is a distraction. It’s a good taste, too.

I need to wrap this up with a Michael Bublé song. Home seems like the right pick for this one. It’s a nice, warm song that feels like you’re getting a hug the whole time. It’s nothing that’s going to rock your world, but it’s a comfort song. Just like pineapple Bubly is in this comfortable place of flavour, with a consistency that’s like a hug for your mouth. Pineapple Bubly tastes like Home.

My current order for flavours is peach, pineapple, watermelon, lime, and cherry.

My Theory on Movie Posters Helping Kill the Concept of Movie Stars

Scream was one of the most important movies of the 1990s. It ushered in a new era of horror, giving a breath of fresh air to what had been a stale slasher subgenre for a few years. It made horror a viable genre for many stars of that era, casting actors known for work outside horror, rather than the unknowns that many horror flicks prior to that utilized. At the same time, Scream set a precedent with its poster that has only hurt the industry. It led to the downfall of the typical movie star.

The movie industry used to revolve around the audiences’ desire to see certain people on the big screen. It didn’t matter what the movie was. For the most part. If an actor they liked was in the movie, audiences would make the trip to the theater to see them. That was the basis of the star system in Hollywood from the 1920s to 1960s. The studios would sign people to contracts, build up their onscreen and offscreen personalities, and make them popular stars to feature in their movies. Obviously, there were parts of this system that didn’t work. There was a lack of freedom of creativity for the stars. There were morality clauses and such ludicrous things that disallowed stars to live comfortably. They had to always be on as the characters the studios built. And, of course, it gave studios full control to treat actors like slaves. That’s not a great system. But it did do one thing right. The stars were front and center because they were the ones that audiences focused on.

Once the star system fell, the studios still relied on star power to sell their movies. The main difference was that they weren’t forcing the stars into a studio mandated box. Stars were allowed to, mostly, live however they wanted. They were allowed to pick and choose projects however they wanted. And this was where things were when Scream was released in 1996.

Scream, itself, wasn’t the downfall of the movie star. It still relied on known actors to push the popularity of the movie. In fact, it was making them the prime focal point for the marketing. Drew Barrymore was set to star in the movie (not that she would last beyond the shocking opening scene). Neve Campbell was in the middle of a six-season run on Party of Five and Courteney Cox was two seasons into Friends. David Arquette was a known actor from his family name as well as the twelve or so movie appearances he had made before. Matthew Lillard had already been in Serial Mom and Hackers. And, of course, Henry Winkler was well known well before Scream was even a thought in Kevin Williamson’s mind because of his role as the Fonz on Happy Days.

This is not to say that Scream was only using established actors in the main roles. Most of them were known, but most were also rising in popularity. However, producers were using the known people to sell the movie. The known people were being used because audiences would fear for their characters’ lives more than they would for the lives of some unknown actor that they only knew from this movie. It was a deliberate choice that paid off for a movie that still has sequels coming out to this day.

What you see now is a poster for a teen comedy that came out three years after Scream. She’s All That was a romantic comedy where a popular high school senior bet his friend that he could turn any girl at their school into the prom queen within six weeks. Little did he know that he would fall in love with the awkward, unpopular girl his friend chose. Yeah, he wasn’t the best guy. But when you put him next to his best friend, he was a saint.

Anyway, I want you to look at the poster for a moment. It’s not as clean as the poster for Scream. That much is true. But there’s one thing it does a whole lot better than Scream. Care to take a guess? Look at Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook. Now look at anyone on that Scream poster. Do you see the difference? It’s okay if you don’t see the thing I’m trying to point out. I haven’t been all that clear with it.

In the She’s All That poster, the two stars emoted. They conveyed some sort of personality. It could have been the personality of the characters, or the personality of the actors. That doesn’t matter. Something came through based on their facial expressions. On the Scream poster, everyone gave a blank stare. Aside from David Arquette, who looked kind of sinister with his head tilted down and eyes shifted up. It was as though the actors were told to stare directly down the lens with no emotion.

Now, I understand this kind of direction for the Scream poster. The movie was a mystery where anyone could have been the killer. It was the slasher equivalent of a whodunit movie. Going in, you weren’t getting a Michael Myers or a Jason Voorhees. One of the main characters was going to dress up as the killer and start hacking people. The poster conveyed no emotion because that could hint at who the killer was. Everyone was a suspect. Nobody was ruled out. So nobody had emotion.

The problem with the Scream poster, however, was that studios never really understand he formula of something that works with audiences. If one studio releases a movie in a new style that performs well at the box office, other studios will copy that style, forgetting that there tends to be some substance beneath it. For example, The Matrix came out in 1999. It had bullet time effects and a green hue. How many times in the years following that did movies copy those two things without any of the rest of what made The Matrix special? There’s a context around those two details. Without the context, they don’t work to the same effect.

The same could be said for the Scream poster. The actors are on there without any emotion because of the context to the movie. Any of them could be the killer. They all have no emotion so that you aren’t tipped off one way or the other. You continue to suspect all of them. Iron Man 2 used the same emotionless floating head format to the poster, but there was nothing behind it. It didn’t fit in context to the rest of the movie. Tony Stark should have some emotion on the poster to play up his genius, playboy, philanthropist, millionaire personality. Or it should play on his superheroics. Pepper Potts should be emoting something to do with her relationship with Tony, or maybe even the danger of a superhero/supervillain battle. The focus on Scarlett Johansson should not be her ass. Instead, each actor is giving a blank stare to here, there, and everywhere, and we get an ass shot in a movie that’s not sexual in any way.

In the fourteen years between the releases of Scream and Iron Man 2, the Hollywood landscape changed drastically. The shift from star power to intellectual property power was in full swing. This poster format is a big indicator of that. The actors’ floating heads with no emotion are a showcase of studios thinking of the poster more as a list than imagery. They are no longer selling a tone or a star. Posters are being used to tell you what’s in the movie without giving a feel for it. They aren’t selling a movie. They’re selling a list of parts.

How much does the poster for Iron Man 2 tell you about Iron Man 2? It has Robert Downey Jr., Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, and Scarlett Johansson (and her ass). There’s a guy with whips. There’s an explosion. There are two Iron Man suits. How does this all relate? No idea. How does this stuff feel? No idea. How do the characters feel? There’s no indication of that. The poster for She’s All That sold both a tone and a relationship. The poster for Scream sold the tone. The poster for Iron Man 2 doesn’t sell either of these things. It just sells a list of parts without really putting the parts together.

And that’s where this floating head style of poster took its toll on the concept of movie stars. They removed most of the emotion from the faces of the characters. They took away from the unique looks that characters had. Without an interesting visual or an emotion conveyed, the attachment between the potential audience and the star broke. The audience, like the studios, started to see the stars as a part of a property and not as the driving force of that property. The property became the driving force.

Look at the poster for The Breakfast Club. You might not get any emotion from the characters, who all look simply into the camera. Yet you connect with them because you understand their personalities through their looks. You get a sense that these five teenagers, from different backgrounds and cliques, came together in the movie. You recognize the jock, the nerd, the goth-ish outsider from their clothes and poses. There’s a connection built with the characters through their entire bodies, through having the context of their faces. The poster sold who these people were, and, in turn, the people sold what the movie was.

The modern trend of floating head posters doesn’t sell the characters like they used to. The posters don’t allow audiences to connect with people, probably because actors have become interchangeable. The intellectual property has become the driving force. James Bond can be recast. Batman can be recast. Jack Ryan can be recast. If studios are so willing to recast big roles, there is no longer a reason for them to build movie stars. They don’t need movie stars to sell their projects when the projects sell themselves, even after endless reboots, remakes, and recastings.

This entire thing started with the popularity of a little slasher movie from 1996. Scream chose a format for their poster that fit with what the movie was going for. Studios recognized the popularity of the movie, and they took an element of the poster they thought was successful. However, it got twisted in a way were the actors started to feel like footnotes in their own movies. They started to feel less like people, which made them feel less like stars. The focal point became the intellectual property, rather than the stars. And, thus, movie stars began to disappear.

I’m not going to say that posters were the only factor in the decline of the movie star idea. There have been other factors such as the rise of television, the internet, changing of generations, and people choosing to no longer put up with bad behaviour. I do, however, think much of it falls at the foot of studios. There should be some sort of collaboration. A studio can build a star, then that star can help build the studio’s success. Things have become more one-sided. Perhaps that’s why the WGA is on strike and SAG may go on strike soon. The studios just don’t care to help anyone anymore, even if it would be mutually beneficial.