The King's Joy

Back in early November we got a look at the poster for Harvey Weinstein's big Oscar contender The King's Speech. It was not good. We later heard from the film's director Tom Hooper that the poster was being scrapped and that a new one was coming along very soon. It made sense that they would do that since, well, did you see that first poster? It was one of the worst posters you'll ever see for a major release.

We now have said new poster and while it is certainly an improvement over the first one's poorly Photoshopped goofiness and strange constipated expressions, there is more to object to. Let's take a look at the British quad (a design from which I'm sure the new American poster will be incorporated out of).


Yes, I think we can all agree this is better. However, I call umbrage on that quote from Empire.

"LIKE ALL GREAT FILMS IT SIMPLY FILLS YOU WITH JOY"
Empire

While I might normally expect a quote such as this to come from a hack quote whore critic whose sole job in life is to appear on posters for everything from The King's Speech to Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous sounding like a rabid wowser frothing at the mouth, but Empire are usually a bit better than that.

Still, this quote is all kinds of wrong no matter who said it. "Like all great film"? you say. Like "ALL" of them? It's nice to know that, according to Empire, you can only be considered a great film if it "fills you with joy". Sorry Lars von Trier, Michelangelo Antonioni, Darren Aronofsky, Ingmar Bergman, Andrey Tarkovskiy, Stanley Kubrick, Yasujirô Ozu, Claire Denis, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Gus Van Sant and any other director over the last 100+ years of filmmaking. Unless all those miserable and challenging films you made over the years didn't fill us with joy then they can no longer be hailed as great. Don't even get me started on your films being called masterpieces. Only the most joyful of joyous films get that title.