And the BAFTA for best tagline goes to…
Roll out the red carpet, the BAFTA nominations are here. Film distributors are currently competing to try and match critical acclaim with box office success. And as a result, film posters are everywhere. Each of them sprinkled with star-ratings, superlatives and spin.
Do you need a tagline?
Well, two of this year’s screen titans haven’t bothered. Both Lincoln (20th Century Fox) and Skyfall (Sony Pictures) use iconic imagery instead of language. But for those films without globally renowned spies or historic US presidents, taglines can be really useful. They add a little intrigue, play with our expectations and pull us into the world of the film. So, which nominees have the best and worst taglines going into this season’s awards?
And the winners are…
Les Misérables (Universal Pictures) ‘Fight. Dream. Hope. Love’
Short. Powerful. Inclusive. Engaging.
Django Unchained (Sony Pictures) ‘The D is silent. Payback won’t be’
A tongue-in-cheek tagline with some personality and gusto.
Silver Linings Playbook (Entertainment) ‘Love hurts’
Ambiguous title? Use a simple tagline that sums up the genre.
Sadly, going home empty handed…
Argo (Warner Bros.) ‘The movie was fake. The mission was real’
Without the pretext for the film, this tagline is just plain confusing.
Zero Dark Thirty (Universal Pictures) ‘The greatest manhunt in history’
Who says so? Not the worst, but unimaginative and restrictive.
Life of Pi (20th Century Fox) ‘Believe the unbelievable’
In the context of the film this works, but outside of that it’s clichéd and nondescript.
Which is your winner?
