New ‘Cloud Atlas’ Poster Showcases an Impressive Cast

For many people, 'Cloud Atlas' is going to be a tough sell: ambitious, oddball New Age-y science fiction is the not the kind of thing that brings in the box office receipts. However, this is an ambitious, oddball New Age-y science fiction movie that also features a stunning ensemble of incredible actors. Naturally, the new poster chooses to emphasize that fact.

Since it takes place in six locations in time periods centuries apart, it would be difficult to sum up 'Cloud Atlas' with a single image. Instead, the poster sprawls its cast across the various stories, letting characters and locations that are centuries apart collide. Jim Broadbent is seen as his character from modern day England, Halle Berry as a 1970s investigative reporter, Ben Whishaw as a composer in 1930s Vienna, Jim Sturgess as a lawyer traveling the Pacific in the 1840s, Zhou Xun as a rebellious clone in the far future and above them all is Tom Hanks, playing waaay against type as a tribesman in the distant post-apocalypse. Hugo Weaving, oddly enough, is nowhere to be seen.

Although this poster is certainly more artfully done than many major one-sheets these days, at the end of the day, it's still a bunch of photoshopped floating heads. Which makes us wonder: why not paint this poster? The layout of the poster and the artistic concepts on display are fine, but the fact that it's a obviously a bunch of stills slapped on top of each other robs it of any real power. If this exact image was painted (by someone like Drew Struzan, for example), it would actually be a truly incredible image.

'Cloud Atlas' opens on October 26. Thoughts on the poster aside, it's one of your most anticipated films of the year. What do you think?