Out of the Shadows posters

If you had a problem with the last group of posters that Paramount released to promote Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, I can only wonder what you might think of these TMNT posters. Unlike the amount of effort that went into the hero shots we saw just a few weeks ago, it would appear that in this case they simply took an emoji of a turtle and put different colored bandannas on each to represent all four turtles. There’s definitely something to be said for minimalist design, but this has got to be a joke.

Nothing else really needs to be said about these Out of the Shadows emoji posters, but where’s the fun in taking that approach? I spent a lot of time learning about art criticism while earning my degree, so why not put that knowledge to good use? Allow me to give you a highly pretentious critique of these posters which truly reflects the amount of effort put into the artwork on display.

As you can see, the artist has elected to provide commentary on the modern digital lifestyle, using the common emoji to send a message about the hopelessness and repetition within our society. With the turtles themselves representing an amalgamation of different ideas that were popular among artists and creators in the independent comic scene of the early 80’s, they are a symbol of the democratization of the arts, in so much as they were created by combining several popular concepts into one small graphic novel which was initially produced on an incredibly low budget.

Today, the corporate structure that controls their entity has recycled their images so frequently that they are now easily replicated and reproduced in a variety of ways that are easily understood by even the layman. As such, even a simple little image of a turtle with a small stripe of color can be recognized implicitly to be a Ninja Turtle, thus taking the turtles themselves from their birth within the postmodern movement to the modern day post-postmodern artistic world wherein memes and emojis represent an even more advanced example of democratized art. A large corporate entity recognizes the popularity of this artistic movement, and chooses to keep their promotional costs down while giving the people what they want.

If that all sounded like a bunch of nonsense, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that there are a few nuggets of truth in there. Of course, most of them are surrounded by nonsense, but you probably figured that out by now. The TL;DR version? This is a cheap attempt to cash in on popular meme and social media culture.

It’s definitely silly and not meant to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t poke fun at the lack of effort put into this promotional material. Heck, Paramount is probably hoping that these TMNT posters will make you laugh. Well, they sure gave me a hearty chuckle, and I hope that my ridiculous criticism of them also put a smile on your face.