Many fans have felt disappointed by the posters for the upcoming fourth film in the Sony Pictures Spider-Man universe – our own writers included. There were resigned sighs all round when the main Madame Web poster turned out to be an uninspiring floating heads affair. And the individual character posters also felt rather bland.
Happily, that's been compensated for with the appearance of two much more creative poster designs for the IMAX and 4DX releases. In fact, these are up there with the several great film posters we've already seen this year.
First up, the official IMAX account on X shared a poster that nods to retro horror designs, showing the silhouette of a woman and a spider above her. In a nice antidote to the typical floating head design, the central motif is surrounded by characters from the movie: Cassandra Webb, Ezekiel Sims, Julia Carpenter, Mattie Franklin and Anya Corazon, but only close up details of their eyes.
There's a big emphasis on shape and texture too. Webs, diagonal lines, shards of flying glass and a kind of laser beam connecting the three characters at the top of the poster, giving an occult vibe.
The second poster was designed by the Mexican-Cuban-American illustrator Orlando Arocena and appeared on the X account of ticketing platform Fandango to promote the 4XD release of the film. Again, there's an evocative cult retro feel, with lots of web-like leading lines as Cassandra towers over silhouettes of Anya, Julia and Mattie. The masked face of Ezekiel looms over the whole seen from behind.
As always, it's a shame this kind of design wasn't chosen for the main poster, but, alas, there commercial considerations, and contracts with actors, often make the floating heads formula the order of the day. It's nice to see this artwork at least gets an airing in exclusives or teasers for special releases.
Madame Web is scheduled for release on February 14 / 15 depending on where you are. For more poster inspiration, see our pick of poster designs and the new Tenet poster.
