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.
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