Posters I don't like: We Are Marshall

I've never seen We Are Marshall.

And there are a number of reasons why I'm not that interested:

1) Although I'm a huge sports fan, I don't really like sports movies. This will be the subject of a longer post at another time.

2) It's directed by McG.

3) This poster.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a movie about a football program that rises from the ashes of a plane crash that kills the entire team? And makes a heart-warming return to Division I viability a very short time afterward?

Why, then, do the two Matthews (McConaughey and Fox) wear the exact same incredulous smirk on their faces?

I'm not one for excess solemnity, but solemnity certainly seems to be warranted in a movie about the untimely deaths of an entire college sports team. I've always worried about this kind of thing happening to an entire professional team. Imagine that. Not that that would be more tragic, just that the people would be more famous, so it would seem like a bigger deal. Famous people dying always trumps unknowns dying.

Yet when the task arose to distill a single image from the film that would convey what it was all about, and thereby make people want to see it, they chose an image in which McConaughey and Fox both seem to be saying, "Are you shitting me?"

I can kind of piece together why they have this look on their faces. Someone off screen is doubting that they can do the thing they're trying to do. Someone off screen says, "You can't build an entire football team out of rejects and second-stringers and try to make them competitive." And, taking exception to that charge, the Matthews return a look that captures their amused disdain.

But as the single defining image of the movie? It doesn't work.

And even if one of them wanted to have that expression, did they both need to have it? The exact same one?

I said earlier in this post that I had no interest in seeing We Are Marshall, but lo and behold, I now see that it's currently unreviewed on my site. Well well, that changes matters.

Maybe I'll get to see what all that smirking, you-think-you're-better'n-me bemusement is all about, after all.