Oh God. I mean… Oh God.

The first Scary Movie premiered this particular type of poster design back in 2000, with all the various characters in the movie theater seats. It was rather clever considering this was very much a meta film that was all about joking both with the conventions and with particular moments from horror movies.

Then came Scary Movie 2 in 2001, and they made the exact same kind of poster. Then, in 2003, came Scary Movie 3. And they made the same of kind of poster. Then came Scary Movie 4 in 2006, and apparently the marketing people realized that the concept probably was all played out, so they put their thinking caps on and came up with a few different designs for the teaser posters that mocked particular movies. And then, for the final poster, they did the people in movie theater seats thing. Again.

Superhero Movie comes from many of the same people that were behind the Scary Movie franchise and is, in essence, a relaunch of that series with a new name. Obviously they thought they needed to shake things up a bit before the series got completely stale. But do they extend this shaking up to the poster design? No, they do the same god damned characters in the movie theater seats thing once again. For the fifth time.

And not only is the idea as stale as a piece of bread that fell behind the couch a month ago, this is probably the worst execution of it we have seen yet. I mean, take a good look at the tagline. “The greatest superhero movie of all time (not including the others).” Bravo. That is the kind of wit you can generally only get from an anonymous 12-year-olds writing Ain’t It Cool News Talkbacks.

At least David Zucker and Jim Abrahams, who respectively directed and wrote the last Scary Movie and who were a big part of the team behind Airplane!, aren’t involved in this one. So I’m free to hate without the need to weep for their destroyed reputation.

(Via Cinematical)