"The Grey" is pretty black and white...

Movie Poster Monday makes an aggressive start to 2012 with our first guest blogger! We are proud to welcome acclaimed mixed martial arts blogger, Mike McPhee, @ManCaveMMA, and owner of Mike's Man Cave, for his first movie poster review. (We hope he doesn't get bored and decide to practice submission holds on our interns...)

This Movie Poster Monday we’ll be reviewing “The Grey”.  This week’s five points of the poster are:

(Image credit: filmofilia.com)

1. Liam Neeson is by far the biggest star in this movie. By placing his name at the top of the movie poster it draws you in.  Fans know the name and recognize him from some legendary roles, so prominently displaying it adds validity to the movie.  Plus, he was a Jedi, so you will be mind-tricked by his eyes into seeing this movie.

2. The wound on his face ties in with the tagline ‘Live Or Die On This Day’.  From the poster it is not clear what the movie is about, but the injury and the tagline do give the potential movie goer a glimpse into the struggle or battle Liam will face.  We have seen Liam Neeson do battle in several movies and know he will pull off the role very successfully.  Designers of the poster are hoping fans will be drawn into the hope of what may be another masterful performance.  Either that or fans want to see Liam Neeson kick the crap out of some bad guys.

3. The rest of the cast and information on who made the movie is displayed on the poster but the print is small.  From a distance it is nothing more than a blur.  The focus is clearly on Liam Neeson to sell this movie poster by himself.  With no other known names other than Dermot Mulroney, and the lack of a big name director, the studio is hedging all their bets on Mr. Neeson.  If he can train Batman, then who else do you really need?

4. A relatively new addition to posters & other advertisements is the QR code.  Fans with smart phones who have a scanning app can be taken to a dedicated website where more information is available on the film.  We thought about scanning it, but got distracted by re-runs of  "Beavis and Butthead"...  So glad they are back!

5. Ok, they've started showing "16 and Pregnant" so we're back. In a rare show of social media savvy, the featured website for the movie is not one from the studio but from Facebook and there's a hashtag! Just for fun let's make #TheGrey the trending topic this week, but in your Tweets talk about things that are grey in color and not the movie...

The Force is strong with Liam Neeson.  The studio is banking on him to sell this movie.  Liam is very capable of doing that and we see no reason why this movie will not do well.  In conclusions, based on the analysis we would predict a $26.5 million opening weekend for Qui-Gon Jinn.