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Dale Harvey

This is still the pinnacle of graphic design

A guardian review giving 2 stars
The movie posted disguising the 2 star review to look like more
27 comments
coldclimate

@dale when I watched that film my face blindness was running a bit hot, and I had no idea Tom Hardy played both twins.

Dale Harvey

@coldclimate It took me a good while to realise, it was giving me weird uncanny valley vibes, I couldnt quite tell what was off at first

Seb

@dale That’s fantastic. I mean they could have just not included it but this way they effectively give the finger to the Guardian critic.

Tonya Canning

@seb321 @dale Plus potentially a bit of Streisand effect additional exposure if the critic called them on it.

Seb

@TonyaCanning @dale Yeah, kinda had to. The problem with critics is that they consider their opinion the only valid one or at least that it carries more weight than a normal person’s. Shock horror that promoters might use quotes from ordinary people! Almost as if we might not need critics at all to make up our minds for us.

Alda Vigdís :topspicy: 🇵🇸

@dale Honestly, if it gets 2 stars from the negative dulllords at the Guardian, then it must be a god film.

Dale Harvey

@alda It is a pretty decent film, I enjoyed it

Whitney Loblaw

@dale whyyyy did they bother putting it in?? So weird.

Damon L. Wakes

@stragu @dale It lets them show they got a review from The Guardian. Not only that, it suggests (though carefully avoids outright claiming) the review was four stars. It's the same reason you'll sometimes see a movie poster quote a review as saying "AMAZING" even though the review actually says "The CGI is amazing, but it's absolutely wasted on what's undoubtedly the worst film I've ever seen."

Badly-optimised primate

@dale

I don't normally like to link to that newspaper, but...

> There’s something maddeningly brilliant about this promotional sleight of hand. Technically, there’s nothing dishonest about the use of my rating. I gave it two stars and there are just two stars on display. I’ve been trolled and I’m totally alright with it.

theguardian.com/film/filmblog/

Dale Harvey

@moopet Cheers yeh I missed that first time round (probably for the same reason). All round pretty funny event

Talya (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

@dale I knew about this thanks to Tom Scott's podcast and I still find it extremely amusing

Damon L. Wakes

@dale The more I look at this, the more I think it's the MTV review just below that really makes it. They're showing a couple of stars partially obscured by the characters right beneath the two-star review that's placed as if it has two more stars completely hidden.

Marx Mentat

@dale it's unfortunate they didn't have another 5 star review to use in place of the sky movies one. They were so close to a complete grid of stars

Miari frigorifiée j-25

@Marksist @dale if you look carefully, all the reviews in the center row are 4-stars or less :blobcatgiggle:

Seth Pilgrim

@dale always love that story! Genius move from the marketing/poster crew

siege

@dale a west end theatre company i was the long term designer for got a 0 star review from one of the british papers and they were so overjoyed because everyone was pretty sure its the first time anyone has ever gotten 0 stars so they wanted it on the posters, but figuring out how to show zero stars compared to all the other 5 stars they had was a serious design issue.

Cassandra

@dale This is GENIUS and I elaborate in the hopes people who can't see the image will enjoy it too.

The poster for Legend, with 2 pictures of Tom Hardy (glasses & plain).

In the background behind the Toms are 4 rows / 3 columns of 4 & 5-star reviews. Of note, MTV has 4 stars, but the outer 2 are partially obscured by Toms' necks.

The Guardian's 2 stars are clear between Toms' ears. The *implication* is there are 4 total, same as all the others, you just can't see them because of Toms' heads.

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