Every week at SiftPop.com, we challenge our writers to come up with their favorite answer to a movie-related prompt tied to a recent release. This week, with the release of Alien: Romulus, the sequel to the classic, Alien, we’re discussing some of our favorite movie taglines, in honor of that of Alien! Let us know your favorites @SiftPop!
“Life is in their hands — death is on their minds!”
Such is the tagline for the Sidney Lumet classic, 12 Angry Men, and I personally couldn’t think of a better descriptor for that story. When it comes to marketing a film, the best taglines are like a good elevator pitch: They should succinctly synopsize the film’s premise with some sort of clever wordplay or hook that will leave an impression on whoever reads it on a poster or hears it in a trailer. 12 Angry Men’s tagline succeeds on both accounts, setting the stage and laying out the stakes for the conversations that will be held in the juror’s room, with a juxtaposition of life and death that sticks in your mind. In only 10 catchy words they were able to create a memorable quip that leaves me wanting to know more about what is to occur, exactly what you want a tagline to do. (Jake Hjort)
“In space, no one can hear you scream.”
In just eight words, this tagline sets up everything. It tells you what this Alien movie is about, makes you feel a bit scared, and is sharp, precise and a masterclass in how you sell your film to the audience. What I also love about this tagline is that you don’t ever hear it in the movie; rather, you see it played out for you. I still remember watching a video of early reactions in 1979 when they interviewed people who just finished the film, and they were terrified. The interview then ended with a shot of that iconic poster with the alien egg and that tagline right underneath. Simple, effective, and raw. Whoever thought of this tagline was a genius, and I don’t think any movie before or after did it better than the original Alien. (Luke Burian)
“Whoever wins… we lose.”
…What? It’s not “SiftPop’s 200 Movies to See Before You Die.” Is Alien vs. Predator good? No, I don’t think so, even if my preteen brain probably got its fair share of endorphins back when I first watched it. However, you can’t deny this tagline rules. It’s a film that’s very obviously promising you a showdown between two of cinema’s greatest monsters. It’s literally titled, Alien vs. Predator, and you couldn’t write anything better to tease that premise. It’s undeniable that the premise is appealing — that’s how you get a film like this made. Should they have gotten the tagline writer to help do that to the actual script so the rest of the film lived up to the elevator pitch? Perhaps. (Jake Bourgeois)
“When a girl has a heart of stone, there’s only one way to melt it. Just add Ice.”
Starring in his first motion picture (was there more than one? Hold please… holy crap he has 27 acting credits?! Not all cameos?! What world am I living in?!) is Vanilla Ice in Cool As Ice. This tagline is already a lot to unpack, but I think by this point no one is surprised to find out that this hidden gem of the ‘90s only earned 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, which honestly feels a bit high. This tagline is so ’90s it should be wearing Jencos, drinking surge, chewing bubbletape, and playing with a Tamagotchi. I can’t help but think the most creative writing that happened during the production of this “film” was during the marketing process, because after watching some trailers and clips, that’s about as good as it gets, unless you count the premise itself. Johnny (Ice) moves to a small town and attempts to woo a girl whose family is in witness protection. Does she really have a “heart of stone,” or rather a very real fear of being discovered if she gallivants around town with somebody as conspicuous as Ice (his motorcycle and pants are bright enough to glow in the dark, making him definitely stand out in a crowd)? I cannot and will not recommend the actual movie; however, I can confidently say you will not regret checking out the poster and trailer. They certainly made me laugh… (Patrice Downing)
“He was dead… But he got better.”
Once every few years, you will come across a movie so brilliantly filmed, so masterfully plotted, and so deeply moving that you find yourself wanting to sing its praises from the highest rooftop you can find. If you enjoyed such classics as Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, allow me to introduce you to your new favorite film, Crank: High Voltage. Jason Statham reprises his role as the one and only Chev Chelios, whose death at the end of the original Crank would ordinarily have put an end to any other burgeoning franchise. Thankfully, this sequel — wrongfully snubbed for a Best Picture nomination — opens with an ingenious plot device in which Chelios is given an artificial heart with an external battery pack attachment. As the film’s eloquent tagline (a play on Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s “She turned me into a newt… I got better”) suggests, this allows Chelios to remain alive long enough for the film’s frenetic action to pick up right where the original left off. The film’s sensitive, nuanced portrayal of a poisoned man who must keep his heart rate up lest he die a cruel and spontaneous death sets the standard for greatest sequel of all time, just narrowly topping The Godfather: Part II. (Foster Harlfinger)
“Why so serious?”
It’s hard, likely impossible, to overestimate the cultural impact that The Dark Knight had — and it all started with that poster. Sure, the internet reacted as reasonably as they usually do to the casting of that one guy from Brokeback Mountain as the Joker, but as soon as the marketing campaign began, that was all over. What made the marketing so ingenious was the mystery shrouding Heath Ledger’s Joker, which carries over into the film. We don’t know what he wants and we don’t know who he is, and that makes everything all the more terrifying. It’s a reason the tagline, in conjunction with the poster, works so well. What does “Why so serious?” mean? It asks a question that we don’t know how to answer. When paired with the bloody handwriting and smile and the out-of-focus image, it creates something so iconic that there’s a reason it’s still a staple in college dorm rooms more than 15 years later. (Jake Bourgeois)
“Who you gonna call?”
What is the appropriate response to anyone ever asking you, “Who you gonna call?” GHOSTBUSTERS! This tagline is obviously a significant part of the similarly named film as well. The cultural impact of this single question has the lasted longer than you could ever imagine. This is one of the most famous movie lines in history. But when a tagline can elicit someone immediately recalling the name of your film, you won the tagline lottery. There is so much personality and fun in this classic horror/sci-fi/comedy, and its tagline fits perfectly. The silly and awkward commercial they make in-film is hilarious — it’s a perfect place to reinforce the tagline and what is now the catch phrase for these supernatural investigators. Paired with the incredibly catchy and iconic theme song, you will have everyone yelling, “GHOSTBUSTERS!” together. Ghostbusters is one of the funniest movies ever made and a cultural cornerstone, and it all started with a simple question. (Shane Conto)
“Oh my God, that’s my daughter!”
The poster for Hardcore is simple. At the top, we see these six simple words on a field of black; George C. Scott’s expression of pure anguish is in the bottom right; and the title runs along the bottom. Though this quote is never actually uttered within the film itself, it may as well be running through Jake’s (Scott) head over and over, as the Calvinist Midwesterner learns his teenage daughter is now working in the Los Angeles adult film industry. It’s a tagline that perfectly encapsulates the interior wrestling which characters so often go through in Paul Schrader movies, and the naked, in-your-face presentation of the poster is enough to evoke shock within any viewer. (Robert Bouffard)
“This time they’re running from the joint.”
Some movies just know what they are and don’t apologize for it. When the stoner comedy sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,decided to look controversy straight in the face and then lean into the controversy by making this its tagline, they knew exactly what they were doing. The titular duo (Kal Penn and John Cho) is the perfect lens at which to irreverently poke fun at the controversial prison that became synonymous with post-9/11 military practices. While I don’t know how much this one would hold up in a more recent rewatch, and it’s certainly not the most memorable entry in the franchise, there’s something to be said for a film that knows exactly how to make an irreverent comedy for the era it’s in. (Jake Bourgeois)
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”
The unachievable quest to craft a shark movie even remotely approaching the quality of Jaws began within the franchise with 1978’s Jaws 2, and it continues to this day. The sequel lags far behind its predecessor in nearly every way, but it has the advantage in tagline. The Jaws tagline of, “You’ll never go in the water again” was fairly accurate, but the flaw was you didn’t appreciate the reality of the line until after being terrified by the film. Jaws 2 had the advantage of playing off the success of the first movie. I pride myself on being a well-versed shark enthusiast, thanks to years of consuming Shark Week and reading multiple books, and even I still have Jaws in the back of my mind anytime I go near an ocean. As a kid, after jumping off the diving board at the neighborhood pool, I would swim to the ladder like my life depended on it as my imagination ran wild picturing Bruce coming up from below. Jaws crafted so much fear that the more concerning shark attacks became people overreacting by hunting the creatures. Jaws 2 brilliantly played off that and cultivated a vibe that it would reinvigorate that terror. The end result failed to deliver on that promise, but the tagline did its job, with the movie grossing over $208 million on a budget of about $30 million. (Jason Mack)
“An adventure 65 million years in the making.”
There’s a subtle brilliance to this factual tagline that, prior to watching the movie, can come across as a bit of hyperbole. Even though Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs are created in more modern times, according to Mr. DNA (Greg Burson), the genetic material sourced was first collected millions of years earlier via tiny mosquito bites. So technically, everything that happens as a result of the replicated dino clones wreaking havoc upon the park visitors, is a result of those mosquitos snatching the original reptiles’ DNA. Preserving it across the epochs in amber, until Dr. Woo (B.D. Wong) and crew could develop the technology to extract the needed cells, bringing the terrible lizards back to life, thanks to the bothersome bites of those ancient insects. A terrorizing tyrannosaur, raging raptors, and debilitating dilophosaurus courtesy of nature’s most obnoxious arthropods. Mosquitos: annoying reptiles and mammals alike for over 65 million years. (Patrice Downing)
“The first casualty of war is innocence.”
When I think of the combination of an effective poster and tagline for a movie, I instantly think of Platoon. I remember how the VHS tape looked in my dad’s collection and him talking to me about how much he loved that tagline. The scene of Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) with his arms raised up is iconic and leaves a lasting imprint in your mind once you actually see the movie. Yes, other war movies have used similar taglines, but Platoon does an exceptional job of combining all the elements and making them a striking and emotional message with a captivating visual. (Mike Hilty)
“No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 cast and crew members were.”
Insane, but by all accounts mostly true. In fact, if you are brave enough to watch just the first (or really any) 15 minutes of Roar, you’ll see no less than 20 lions (along with seven other species of big cats) at any given time, basically mauling the cast, who didn’t require a whole lot of acting ability to portray the fear they all clearly felt. A lot of the injuries in the movie are real. Among them the mangled calf of the director (Noel Marshall) and the patchwork scalp of the cinematographer (Jan de Bont) shown in some of the alternate movie posters. Crazier still, this flick was being billed as a comedy adventure. Unsurprisingly, it flopped horribly at the box office, only recouping about two of the over 17 million dollars it cost to make throughout 11 years of production. And that two million in theaters came mostly from overseas, in countries which promoted Roar as a horror movie, which is convenient as the tagline works both ways. (Patrice Downing)
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
If you were making a Mount Rushmore of taglines, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …” would have to be on it. Yes, yes, I know Mount Rushmores are a bit of a sports radio cliché, but just think about that for a second. Not only is it a great tagline for the franchise, but ever since the debut of the original Star Wars movie, when people hear that opening fanfare and see the opening crawl begin, they know they’re getting that iconic line. It’s got an argument for one of the greatest lines in all of cinema, and it’s just words on the screen. If that’s not iconic, I don’t know what is. (Jake Bourgeois)
“You’ll believe a man can fly.”
There is something so pure about a tagline as straightforward as the one planted firmly in the center of the poster of the original Superman. Such a promotion might not sway today’s audiences, but it stands as a charming mark of the times that a convincing depiction of human flight was all it took for audiences in 1978 to be amazed. Just one short phrase immediately crafts a vivid mental picture of heroism that has come to define the comic book genre for nearly five decades and counting. Not bad for a six-word tagline. (Foster Harlfinger)
“Who will survive, and what will be left of them?”
Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street are all scary movies. That is, until you’ve seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, at which point they all look like family films by comparison. Texas Chain Saw’s tagline may feel tongue-in-cheek (which it is), but it is certainly not hyperbole. Despite keeping most of the violence off screen, Texas Chain Saw is one of the most deliberately upsetting films you will ever see, and the film’s gnarly tagline perfectly exemplifies its morbid sense of humor. (Foster Harlfinger)