13 Of The Worst Photoshop Fails On Iconic Movie Posters

Many people may be calling for DC to release the “Ayer cut” of Suicide Squad, but I want to see the director re-visit Street Kings. Well, at least this poster. David Ayer has had a great career, with directing and screenwriting credits like The Fast and the Furious, Training Day, and Fury. Street Kings may not be the crown jewel of his filmography, but it’s definitely worth checking if you’re an action fan. 

If you haven’t spotted what’s wrong with this poster, it’s because we’ve seen a billion movie posters with the protagonist shooting a gun. With all those bullets flying, it’s easy to stop looking at whether anyone is actually pulling the trigger. If you look closely you’ll see that Reeves isn’t actually firing his gun. The muzzle flash was added later, but a crucial index finger was not.

First off, HP7 Part 1 had breathtaking special effects. It was called “the most cinematically rewarding chapter yet,” with effects “so special you don’t notice them.” The film was nominated for an Academy Award for visual effects, and just one shot of the “seven Harrys” scene took 90 takes! But it seems like everyone was all burnt out on the movie magic by the time they got to this poster. 

If you haven’t spotted it yet, take a closer look at Radcliffe’s head. Emma Watson is clearly inside the train, and part of his face is behind her head. So he should be inside the train too, right? But if you look at the top of Radcliffe’s head, he appears to be standing outside the train. My guess is that they sized Radcliffe up to make him taller, without minding the gap.

15 years later, and people still claim that the actors’ abs in 300 were enhanced by CGI. I’m sure a lot of the men in this movie would’ve loved to gotten a helping hand from a Snapchat filter, but the truth is that they put in the work. As this behind-the-scenes video shows, they got “smashed” if they came into the gym looking soft (I don’t know what getting smashed means, and no amount of God-Kings or Persian armies could make me find out).

No, the Photoshop blunder in this poster has to do with that big sword Gerard Butler is holding. Actually…is he holding it? If you look closely at his hand, the sword’s hilt doesn’t line up with his closed fist. In fact, the sword isn’t even in his hand but floating right behind it. This is Sparta, I guess.

Shelley Michelle famously acted as the body double for Julia Roberts in this poster, but the graphic designers weren’t done quite yet. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Julia Roberts plays a sex worker who Richard Gere falls in love with (the tag line on the poster does a pretty good job of summing that up). 

What the poster doesn’t tell you, though, is that Gere has dark grey hair throughout the movie. The salt-and-pepper look suits and defines the actor, but I guess it just wasn’t good marketing for the movie. They significantly darkened Gere’s hair for the poster to the point of it looking like a wig. 

Even after the onslaught of MCU movies over the past decade, Spider-Man 2 is considered by many to be one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. Director Sam Raimi brought his eye for special effects into a story that has more to do with human problems than superpowers. Combine that with an incredibly moving performance from Alfred Molina, and you’ve got a classic movie about the Web-Head.

What wasn’t as stellar about Spider-Man 2, though, was the photoshop skills. This is certainly the most famous poster associated with the movie, but Kirsten Dunst’s hand on Spidey’s shoulder might’ve been an afterthought. Just look at her shoulder, then think about the Slender Man-like proportions she would have to have to place her hand where it is. But there’s also a man with eight arms on this poster, so should I really be nitpicking?

Arrival was quickly hailed as one of the best sci-fi films of all time, but it didn’t get all that praise from this poster. For those who aren’t familiar with the area, the massive alien spaceship is parked over Victoria Harbor. It was originally the Hong Kong Harbor, but…colonialism. However, there is one building in this image that is not a piece of Hong Kong’s skyline. See that unique-looking pointy structure in the bottom right? That’s the Oriental Pearl Tower, the fifth tallest self-supported tower in the world. The only problem is that it’s about 750 miles away from Victoria Harbor, in Shanghai.

People were quick to call out the mistake, and the film’s official twitter account stated: “An error was made in an “Arrival” poster by a 3rd party vendor. It’s been corrected and we are disappointed we didn’t catch the error.” If you’re going to photoshop a building into an entirely different area, why do it with one of the most recognizable buildings ever? 

A “high concept movie” is something that can’t easily be summed up in a sentence. “A huge shark terrorizes a beachside town,” or “dinosaurs in the modern age.” Boom, you’ve got Jaws and Jurassic Park. But what other movie has the chutzpah, the integrity, the vision to not only have a premise like “snakes on a plane,” but make it the title and the best quote in the film? That would be like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button if it was called He Ages Backwards. 

This really is a nice poster — it’s simple yet striking. But try to follow each snake’s tail all the way to its mouth. See the problem? Something isn’t adding up, and there’s only one man to call. Fortunately, he’s had it with all these snakes on his plane.

Is this poster being meta, or is the tagline “It’s all in the execution” just an awesome coincidence? Coming in at #82 (of 88) on Rotten Tomatoes’ ranking of Nicolas Cage’s filmography, Bangkok Dangerous didn’t win any Oscars. It is a remake of a 1999 Thai film, but it’s the only remake I’ve heard of that was directed by the same people as the original (the Pang Brothers). 

You may think the Photoshop mistake in this poster has to do with whatever Cage is reaching for in his jacket, but his other hand is where things get weird. See what’s in his hand? Well, nothing’s there. But doesn’t it seem like something was there at some point? Apparently, there was an international poster in which Cage had his arms crossed in a similar way, holding guns in opposite directions. For some reason, the guns were removed, and one hand was stuffed in his jacket. The other is left dead-center, drawing the eye to nothing more than a claw. No wonder this won Worst Poster at the annual IMP Awards.

This remake of a 1977 Clint Eastwood movie (The Gauntlet) has a simple premise. A police officer (Bruce Willis) has to walk a witness (Mos Def) across 16 city blocks. That’s pretty much it. Directed by Richard Donner, the same guy that brought us Lethal Weapon, The Goonies, and Superman, 16 Blocks was shaping up to be another blockbuster 2006. So when this piece of movie marketing came out, movie-goers got ready for everything the poster promised: 1 witness, 118 minutes, Mos Def running, and Bruce Willis with a clean-shaven face. Can you guess which one of those wound up being a lie? 

That’s right, when people finally sat down to watch 16 Blocks, they quickly noticed that, unlike in the poster, Bruce Willis has a very cop-like mustache throughout the entire film. Why digitally remove it for this poster? Was it an old picture of Bruce Willis they repurposed? Were executives afraid you wouldn’t be able to tell who Bruce Willis was with a mustache? Whatever the reason is, the poster’s designer still did a better job than whoever removed Henry Cavill’s mustache in Justice League.

Today, movie posters are more often digital than physical. Sure, half of all dorm rooms in the U.S. have a Pulp Fiction or a Scarface poster hanging on their walls. But for the most part, we’re largely exposed to movie marketing on streaming services. One of Netflix’s few horror-comedy originals, The Babysitter is a movie about a woman who terrorizes the boy she’s babysitting. 

But as Reddit user u/moofthestoof pointed out the year this movie was released, the figure on the poster has two right hands. It may not seem like it at first, but imagine the woman holding those hands palm-down in front of herself. Both thumbs facing left? She must be a witch!

Helen Slater played an amazing Supergirl, and she’s come back to the Superman universe more than once in similar roles. Slater also played Clark Kent’s biological mother in Smallville, as well as Supergirl’s adoptive mom in the 2015 TV show, Supergirl. But even though Slater is the main focus of this poster, she’s not the source of its design flaw. No, it’s the other lady that’s causing the trouble. 

See the Statue of Liberty? Her torch is still lighting the path to liberty, just like the real-life counterpart. The actual Statue of Liberty holds the torch with her right hand. But in an alternate universe (the same one that Supergirl exists in, apparently), Lady Liberty is left-handed. 

High School Musical 2 may seem like a fun summer movie of childhood, but this movie was massive. How big? It was the most popular Disney Channel Original Movie ever (makes sense), but it was even one of the most-watched television premieres in cable history at the time. That’s a lot of tweens! You know what kids aged 6-14 aren’t so good at? Spotting Photoshop flubs on sing-a-long albums. Luckily, I’m here.

These are some of the more difficult mistakes to catch, but all the issues have to do with the limbs. You’ve got your disconnected hands, double-arms, more than the normal amount of human fingers — you know, just relatable high school problems. We were kids! We figured we’d understand things like having 7 fingers by the time we were 18.