Saving Private Ryan Poster Analysis

‘Saving Private Ryan’ Poster Analysis

Firstly, the main focus of the poster is a faded portraits of 4 men in military uniforms. The iconography of these characters- green soldier hats, green soldier uniform, imply that this is a movie some sort of war. The faded effects created the feelings of 'memory' which may imply that all of these soldiers are just memories- they died somewhere in the movie. The middle soldier is staring right back to the audience which makes audience feels intimidated as it implies that he could be quite a tough and strong character in the movie. The soldier on the far right though, however, stares into the ground below him which may suggest that he is quite sad or something tragic happened to him in this film or he may not be as important as the middle guy. The background of the faded portraits is a beautiful scene of an orange sunset. This suggests that the ending of the movie might be a good and peaceful ending as the sunset often refers to peacefulness and calmness. It can also suggest that these characters will have to go through a lot of bad/tragic things in order to reach this sunset/peacefulness.

Also in the middle of the sunset, right in the centre of the poster; is a little black shadow of one soldier standing by, holding his rifle. facing into the sight of the sunset. This could imply that only one of the characters above have survived as there is only one shadow standing and the fact that he's staring into nowhere could suggest that all of his friends died and he could be reliving all the moments of him and his friends inside his head. This makes the audience interested and predict which one of the four from above will survive which grabs their attention and make them want to find out. It may also suggest that they have won the war as there is a survivor left standing in the middle of the sunset(which could suggest the end of war.)

Below the shadow, were the movie title and actors’ names and the production name. All the text were in white in contrast with the black background behind it to make it standout to the audience. Tom Hank’s name were written in bigger font above the movie title while the other actors’ names are below the title. This is because Tom Hank were in many other famous films which may have created reputations for the audiences and grabs attention of all the Tom Hank's fans to be interested in this movie.

The title of the movie were written in bigger font to make it standout more to the audience. The word ‘Saving’ in the title were written in bold to signifies that the movie is about 'saving' somebody. Under it was a sentence 'the mission is a man'- this implies to the audience that there is a mission in the movie and add on to the idea of 'saving' somebody in the title by saying that the mission is acutally a 'man' which is possibly one of the guy in the portrait above. 

The production name of 'Steven Spielberg' were written in another unique font to also make it standout as there are many Steve Spielberg fans out there which might grab their attention to watch this film. The bottom centre of the poster is a release date which tells the audience when the film is releasing and that is quite an important thing to have in a movie poster.