Analysis of Three Examples- Magazine Covers

Star Wars: The Force Awakens• This was a part of

a line of character posters for the release of Star Wars.

• The subject of the poster can be seen front and center of the poster. We also find out his name is Po Dameron upon further investigation.

• This cover is meant to evoke feelings of nostalgia towards the franchise. They achieve this by placing him in traditional star wars attire with star wars vehicles such as x-wings in the background. We can even see a droid in the lower corner upon deeper inspection.

• Considering that Star Wars is such a major franchise, they have relied mainly on imagery to identify the film and put the title in the lower corner.

• We can assume his character is an X-wing pilot considering the props and background that are used. They manage to get this information across through simple visuals.

Gone Girl• This magazine cover

is for David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’ adaption.

• We can see the premise for the film in a bold way. The wife is clearly dead and the husband appears oddly calm about it. The cover doesn't’t go into detail about the scandal aspects to the story but it instead gives away an effective amount of information.

• Fincher’s unique dark comedy can be seen in this cover. The husband is laying with the corpse of his wife on a metal slab as if it was his bed. We can also see that the husband looks happy with her death.

• The film focuses on the success of it’s director, cast and book equivalent. This means that fans of any of these factors can find a reason to.

• The red font of the Gone Girl title is made to stand out more with the bold red font used. This also lends itself to the murder conspiracy genre as red offers connotations to blood.

Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice

• This cover is promoting Zack Snyder’s Batman V. Superman film.

• The two characters are made the focus of the cover as they are mentioned by name and stand side by side.

• We can see the conflict between the two characters in the cover as the middle of the page is torn and the characters are parallel to each other.

• The film promotion changes the layout and themes of the magazine. Other headlines are referred to as a conflict. E.g.. ‘Tom Hardy v. Tom Hardy’ when referring to his film ‘Legend’.

• The two characters are presented as contrasts of each other with the use of black and blue. This shows more examples of the clash.