popular thinking

MOVIE POSTER COPYCATS: If you think you've seen Vin Diesel's new movie, The Pacifier, somewhere before, that's because you probably have.
It was called Kindergarten Cop, with a splash of Mr. Nanny. The former was a hit for Arnold Schwarzenegger; the latter, not so great for one Hulk Hogan.
But Diesel's movie does more than simply swipe the plots from those flicks - even The Pacifier poster is a copycat.
In the poster for Kindergarten Cop, kids tug at Arnold as he gamely plays the proverbial undercover fish out of water. In the Pacifier poster, kids dangle from Diesel as he gamely plays the, yes, proverbial undercover fish out of water.
This seems like a blatant example, though it's not the only one.
Disney's The Ice Princess, starring Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn on TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and premiering March 18, borrows slightly from the not-so-family-friendly 1984 film Angel - each poster sports the lead actress in back-to-back poses showing her before and after character transformation.
At online forum icollectmovieposters.com, one chat participant noted that many contemporary films have used the same two- or three-panel horizontal strip design, with each strip showing one of the stars and/or a background scene, all above the main title. Among them: Gattaca, Head in the Clouds, The Hot Spot, Ladder 49 and A League of Their Own.
Hollywood observers note that the same movie studios that churn out similar plots also resort to the same types of ads and promotions over and over again.
"There's not much originality in movie posters,'' said Rudy Franchi of The Nostalgia Factory.
His Charlestown-based company is a well-known hub for movie memorabilia and the official supplier of movie poster images to the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading my story, from Tuesday's Boston Herald: New films filch ideas for posters, ads and plotlines