Poster: SOURCE CODE - Must Try Harder

Duncan (Moon) Jones' sophomore science fiction effort Source Code, starring the ever mediocre Jake Gyllenhaal, is starting to make me real nervous. What we've seen in the two trailers to date have been less than dazzling, giving off a heavy feeling of deja vu, like we've maybe seen this story told before, in the film Deja Vu. And it always seems rather ordinary, doesn't it? Nevertheless, Jones has so far proved a skilled director with a subtle touch and Summit Entertainment were always going to have final say on the marketing and cutting of a trailer which is of course aimed at the lowest common denominator and mimics the last big blockbuster hit (in this case Inception), so we aren't ready to bail on this film yet. However slight reason to be nervous number 2 comes in a recent interview with Devin Faraci for Badass Digest in which he says, among other things;

"It€™s been a very different way of operating. It was more than just a pre-existing script €“ when I got on board there was already a production plan for how to make the film. When I came in with my wacky ideas it threw a few curve balls at the people actually putting the production together...Fortunately they were very flexible and they understood that I was going to come in with my own ideas and my own thoughts on how to do things. We found ways to adapt and to do things within the time frame we had to actually make things work the way I thought we needed to proceed."

This leads me to wonder about the real depth of Jones' input. Will we notice it? For all the mentions of his creative ideas it does sound a little like he was almost a director for hire on this one. Have we lost another promising director to the studio blockbuster machine? Now to add to these two slightly worrying signals is the new one sheet for the film. Now I'm not saying that a poster is any arbiter of the quality of your film but surely they could have come up with something a little more original than this. And yes, we know Jake Gyllenhaal is a turn-off, but have the confidence in his star power not to push him as far into the background so you have to eye squint to work out who it is. Maybe they were hoping we would think he was Matt Damon?

It holds firm to that hoary old cliche of 'man running down road with gun in hand'. When you add to this the scattered stills from the film, which bizarrely remind me of the ones found on the back of videos from yesteryear and the frankly odd grin on Gyllenhaal's face you have a very strangely composed poster. It's as if they sat around saying they wanted something a little like Inception but can we make it blander.

The only thing that stands out on this poster is what I think may be one of those QR code thingies in the bottom right for scanning with your mobile. Hopefully whatever that gets you is better than this.

Tickets to the premiere maybe, at SXSW on March 11th.