A Redditor has noticed a familiar theme emerging in the movie posters for a few recent Disney movies - 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and forthcoming releases Aladdin and Dark Phoenix. The Aladdin poster in question was released back in March alongside the Disney remake’s full trailer while the Dark Phoenix poster debuted just a couple of days ago ahead of the movie’s much-anticipated June 7 release.

Disney has always been a big producer of pop culture properties, but with their acquisitions of Lucasfilm, Marvel, and most recently Fox, the House of Mouse controls so much more. In addition to the powerhouses of both Pixar and Disney Animation - as well as the live action remakes, like the aforementioned Aladdin - Disney now controls two of the biggest franchises around: Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which can now also begin including Marvel Comics characters originally held by Fox, like the X-Men and Fantastic Four.) With so many properties existing under one corporate umbrella, it’s not all that surprising their marketing materials are looking so similar.

An eagle-eyed Redditor noticed some stark similarities between the recently released posters for Aladdin and Dark Phoenix as well and the theatrical release poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens - they all share the very same color palette of blue and orange. Redditor firefighter_82 posted images of the three posters side-by-side for comparison, writing: “Seems like Disney is using the same guy from the graphics department.” The colors used in the posters aren’t the only similarity either. Even the placement of each movie’s characters within the posters is almost identical, with centrally placed main characters and more minor characters arranged around them (although that does make perfect design sense). Take a look and judge for yourself:

Interestingly, firefighter_82’s suspicions that Disney hired the same people to make the posters is partly true. The posters for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Aladdin were indeed designed by the same company - Lindeman & Associates. The newly released poster for Dark Phoenix, however, is by a completely different creative agency called BLT Communications. It might seem odd that three such very different movies have such similar posters, but they’re all now Disney properties even if genre-wise they don’t share much in common.

There’s also logic to that unifying blue and orange color scheme since they’re complimentary colors, and in fact, blue and orange tones very often appear together in movie posters. Being on opposite sides of the color wheel, blue and orange create an eye-catching contrast - which, naturally, makes perfect design sense because the aim of a good, effective movie poster is to attract a moviegoer’s attention. You can see the blue and orange palette in posters for Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max: Fury Road, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel. Even the old-timey poster for The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t immune to the omnipresent color theme. And once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

Clearly, The Force Awakens, Aladdin and Dark Phoenix are by no means the first movies whose poster artwork has incorporated a blue and orange theme. Just which film, Aladdin or Dark Phoenix, manages to woo more people to movie theaters this year remains to be seen, but even if either film fails, don’t expect movies posters to quit with the blue and orange color schemes.

Next: Everything Dark Phoenix Has Copied From X-Men: The Last Stand

Source: Reddit/firefighter_82

  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix Release Date: 2019-06-07 Aladdin Release Date: 2019-05-24