Bond Movie Cover Art Discussion Thread. (Best and Worst)

Murdock

EDIT: Changed title to get more out of thread.

Every decade or two, Bond movies get re-released on the latest video watching medium and each time with new cover artwork designs. Most of the time the cover art has been pretty good but sometimes it can be really uninspired, lazy or just plain bad. And then there is some art like this that make you go What the heck happened!?!

For me personally these two covers have got to be the worst Bond related covers I've ever seen.

http://i.imgur.com/kvYF6mJ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/npoKgK2.jpg

The one for DAF isn't so bad, but it's not good either. Connery looks like an alien trying to impersonate him and his eyes are colored Blue. His eyes should be brown... The arm holding the gun is bad too. It's very stiff looking. very unnatural. Here's the original photo of Connery that was used to make that terrible photoshop.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GtpOx2bCG6Q/UYDxdAmCyxI/AAAAAAAAXnw/qMbvYDIax9c/s1600/Sean-Connery-Diamonds-Are-Forever.jpg

Now I know working with Black and white photo's can be hard but even I colored it and made it look good as you can see here with my Fan art as an example
http://i.imgur.com/xy8IHqK.jpg

The same goes for TLD what the hell happened? Dalton's face looks deformed which doesn't make any sense considering the original source photo he looks pretty good.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6c/a4/22/6ca4222173ea2c469a4307b8eebce2c9.jpg

What were they thinking!?!

Post some covers you consider to be the worst Bond move cover artwork.

fire_and_ice

This was the first set I had back in the 80s not great compared to later ones.

I gave all my DVDs and videos away of previous Bond Sets, just have the 50th Bluray set now and the SF and SP blurays.

Murdock

That one doesn't look too bad. It's not great but at least some effort was put into it. :P

fire_and_ice

I prefered the blue video covers that followed will get link lol

fire_and_ice

The next video collection I had, I prefered that design.

The Dalton one you posted looks odd, god knows what they did to his face.

Murdock

Oh cool. I never saw those before.

I always loved the 90's vhs covers that carried over to the first special edition DVD releases.
http://www.obsessional.co.uk/cover mgmvideo.jpg

Here's another one for the worst list.
http://i.imgur.com/9SNSQHU.jpg

It's so lazy and scary at the same time. The airbrushing they did to Roger's face is terrifying. It looks like a horror movie, not a Bond movie. :O

ForYourEyesOnly

Yeah, the rendering on some of these is stupid. Moore looked closer to Dracula than Bond in that one.

fire_and_ice

The soft focus almost mannequin look is dreadful.

The next video set I got was this one which looked great on the shelf for obvious reasons :)

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35500000/James-Bond-VHS-Tape-Collection-vhs-35547966-300-144.jpg

I would be interested to see what the VHS to Bluray sales have been over the years with the countless repackaging.

Murdock

This is a really strange one.
http://vhscollector.com/sites/default/files/vhscovers/007-03 Goldfinger1.jpg

Connery looks like a weird CGI, painted hybrid. The pixel explosion is also quite jarring. I have most of the VHS tapes from this Connery Classics line. Most are pretty good but some are just strange.

fire_and_ice

Not seen that art work before, looks more like a video game character. I am region 2 or B its interesting seeing other regions released art work.

Murdock

Yes I believe this was one of the very first VHS releases of the Bond films. I have most of these. They are pretty heavy VHS tapes. They are pretty cool. They came with a trailer for the movie and a Pink Panther cartoon included. I haven't seen all of the tapes but from the few I have seen it's very neat. They ran from DN up to AVTAK.

fire_and_ice

http://hd-report.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/skyfall-blu-ray-300px.jpg

More recent I felt this SF cover uninspired, I am more a fan of cinema art work.

Alas about fifteen years ago I was ruthless and got rid of hundreds of VHS, took up way too much space. I kind of regret it now.

Murdock

Yeah, I never liked any of Skyfall's cover artwork except for the original teaser poster with Daniel walking within a gritty gunbarrel. http://www.007.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SKY_INTL_QUAD_ON_LI5D0C002_s.jpg

I'm glad Spectre was a small step in the right direction but it wasn't as good as it could have been.

fire_and_ice

The gun barrel worked and looks pretty cool as it was the 50th.

Was not keen on SP well this one I bought...



Thought it was again a bit bland compared to many other Bond art work.

Murdock

Yeah that one isn't my favorite but I do prefer the alternate with him and Swann.
http://static.srcdn.com/slir/w960-h960-q90-c960:960/wp-content/uploads/Spectre-poster-Daniel-Craig-Lea-Seydoux.jpg

At least he's smiling in it.

fire_and_ice

The one with swan is better, I like Bond art to be busy. Something along the lines of this greatness...



Or

Murdock

Yes those are my favorite types too. The Poster for TLD especially inspired some of my recent Spectre posters. :)

fire_and_ice

CR was one of the last great ones, I like the TND art that was creative. Showing different scenes of the film always works for me, makes it more punchy and gets more attention I think. The Moore era art work I felt was consistently good.

Murdock

QOS Had some good stuff but I agree with you. The advertising today has really been underwhelming. But the fun of it is seeing what each decade brings to the table artistically.

fire_and_ice

The QoS shadow on the sand was good, that was my desktop for some time.

Murdock

Indeed it was. I've decided to change the name of the topic to broaden it a bit since we have also talked about good cover art as well. :)

fire_and_ice

Think I went off topic a bit, ill try to find some bad art.

fire_and_ice

I remember owning this or one very similar... emphasis on the perma tan.

ForYourEyesOnly

I don't like this one:

http://covers.booktopia.com.au/big/9321337143361/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-007-.jpg

But funnily enough, I like these:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8473/8084152405_4849f40966_b.jpg

http://tshop.r10s.com/e24/222/3e4e/f98b/102d/3d82/ac76/11b6e4bec1005056b70d5d.jpg

Murdock

I've never seen that one before. It looks like it's trying to mimic the Special Edition covers. These two are pretty bad in my opinion. :P

http://www.covershut.com/covers/James-Bond-Never-Say-Never-Again--1983-Front-Cover-7854.jpg

http://www.copertine-dvd.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/007-casino-royale-cover-dvd-2.jpg

ForYourEyesOnly

The Niven one looks plain bad.

Murdock

Much like the movie itself. :))

fire_and_ice

I find it amusing when you have movie covers that have models that clearly look from a different era and are blatantly not in the film.

Murdock

I've seen that done a lot with other films. There is a movie called Impulse starring William Shatner and the DVD cover uses a promo pic of him from Star Trek. I've also seen it done with a Terrance Young directed film called Cold Sweat and despite coming out in 1970, the DVD cover art uses a picture of Charles Bronson from 1985's Death Wish 3 and try to hide it by darkening his hair. It can get pretty bad sometimes. :))

This is a fan created one i'm sure but I love how it tries to pass itself off as an Ultimate Edition Bond movie.

fire_and_ice

I'll have to seek out the Shatner cover you mentioned

Funny you should post that, I was almost certain that one of the Video series they did incorporated NSNA, or a very similar design made to look like danjaq/Eon.

AgentJamesBond007

This is terrible.