Ana Granados

Dr. Sharity Nelson

English 1301

October 23, 2023

Bohemian Rhapsody Movie Poster

Bohemian Rhapsody, the famous movie about the iconic rock band “Queen” came out in

the theaters almost 5 years ago on November 2, 2018. The director, producers, and marketing

team created a movie poster to encourage people to watch this movie. The movie poster for this

movie is unique and very different from other movies. There are a lot of things that someone can

easily notice about the poster when they see it for the first time. Like the bright purple and

yellow colors for the sunset and the background, the silhouette of a man holding a microphone,

the shadow of a big stadium, or the light that´s coming from the left side of the poster. Well,

every little detail has its own meaning and why the movie poster is the way it is.

The silhouette of a man is the first thing someone will notice in the poster. To describe

this silhouette; there´s a man at the left bottom and the man is making a pose kind of extravagant.

There´s also the silhouette of his hand holding something that someone can think of as a

microphone, but the old one that still had the metal part attached to the microphone. Out of this

information, the author wanted to give the meaning that the man holding the microphone is the

vocalist in the band and his name is Freddie Mercury. One of the reasons why the author wanted

just the silhouette is because he wanted to make it as extravagant as Freddie Mercury was. This

could also be a reason why the creator of the poster saw it as a good idea to use this exact pose to

show that the movie was going to be about Queen. Queen´s fans knew how outgoing he was and

how extravagant and his exuberance he used to be when performing so with this pose people
would know it was a movie about him. This can also tie back to the fact that Freddie Mercury

was bisexual/gay, and well this explains the outgoing pose of the silhouette. The reason of why

we can see the features of the main vocalist is to give the audience a mysterious feeling of who is

that man? what´s his story? and the movie was probably going to answer all these questions and

give us a little backstory of what was the real life of Freddie Mercury.

The next main thing about the poster is the sky and the brilliant colors the illustrator used

for the sunset. The sunset is colored purple with a degradation to the color yellow at the very

bottom, which is kind of unusual for a sunset. The reason why the creator may have used for the

movie poster the colors purple and yellow/orange for the big sky was to let people know that this

band is different and maybe it was a little related to the fact that the vocalist was bisexual.

Freddie as said before was very extravagant and wanted everything out of what people are

normally used to, so using this type of color makes people realize all of this information. The

lighting in the poster is significant too. There is a lot of light used in the poster. It comes from the

left side and it is how the silhouette of Freddie is created. It plays a big role in the poster because

these little details are what make the poster unique and different, like the band Queen was. If we

connect all the factors described in the poster, it’s easy to know that the author wanted a different

poster than the normal movie posters.

In the movie poster at the back, there’s a shadow of what someone can say that it’s a

stadium. The stadium is located kind of mid center of the movie poster and it goes through the

whole poster. If someone watched the movie, after watching they would notice that this

illustration of the movie poster is from when they performed at the live aid. The main reason

why the creator chose this exact scene for it to be the main thing for the movie poster, is because

Queen will always be remembered for their presentation at the live aid. The Big Stadium gives
the audience a lot of information that the band was very famous because compared to the size of

the silhouette the stadium is huge. It could also mean that this exact scene is going to be in the

movie and it's going to give details about it.

To sum up, everything that´s been stated so far, the creator and the producer used all these

elements to give the people a meaning of what the movie was going to be about. After watching

the movie the silhouette, the stadium, the pose, the colors, everything will make sense for the

audience. Another reason is that it could be for marketing and to catch someone's attention. The

purpose was to show how the band was and they will always be remembered for how

extravagant and outgoing they were and that they changed the movie industry for all time.
 Appendix

Movie Poster for the Movie Bohemian Rhapsody

 Words Cited Page

Movie Poster for the Movie Bohemian Rhapsody, November 2018; 20th Century Fox.