Poster Analysis: Prometheus

Prometheus is an American-English action, sci-fi, horror film released in 2012, focusing on a research team following clues about humanity’s creation to a mysterious planet. Once on the planet, they find strange contraptions and end up in a battle that will ultimately decide the fate of humankind.

The main focal point of this poster is the giant head in the centre and ranging to the top. It dominates the majority of the poster, meaning the viewer’s eye will automatically be drawn to it. This insinuates that this head, or whatever it represents, will play a large role in the film. After this, the viewer’s eyeline is dragged down by what appears to be torchlight, which almost forms a straight line down. Following this ‘line’, the viewer reads the tagline “The search for our beginning could lead to our end” next. After this, they continue down to the person, presumably a human, who is shining the torch up at the head. The combination of the tagline and the person holding the torch creates the assumption that this person is the one doing the searching in this film. During their search, the come across this giant head. The result of the overall search ends with the potential for the death of all humankind. It can then be drawn from this that the head either is or represents the main antagonist of the film, and that this person, presumably the protagonist, finds them during their search, setting the antagonist on their path of destruction. The aspect of the search is further reinforced by the use of mist and the torch. Torches are commonly used by people investigating things or exploring places and mist is commonly used as a device to convey mystery. The combination of these two devices insinuates that the protagonist will be searching through a mystery which will result in the finding of the antagonist.

The colour scheme for this poster features two main colours: black and white. Black is the overarching colour in this poster, taking up the most space and encompassing the head and the person in an oval. Black is commonly used to represent death, so such a large amount of black on this poster suggests there will be a large amount of death in this film. However, black also represents mystery and the unknown. The fact that a search features as the main narrative device in this poster backs up the use of black as a tool in enforcing this theme of mystery in this poster and the movie. White is commonly used to represent innocence, and the fact that the black is encroaching on the general area of the white suggests that innocence will be lost in the film, most likely through death. White also represents safety and, again, because the black is encroaching on the area of white, it can be assumed that the characters in this film will not be safe.

After analysing this poster, I would say the target audience would be females and males aged 16 – 24.