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It's still briskly cold most mornings, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened to $95 million last weekend, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is almost here — summer movie season starts earlier and earlier every year. Which is why we're launching our Summer Movie Preview before tax day.
We're breaking the massive summer season — 46 movies are set to open wide from May through August — into a five-part extravaganza, and we're kicking things off by keeping the "preview" in Summer Movie Preview, looking at the best and worst posters of the season.
Movie posters are a sadly deteriorating art with fewer and fewer standouts and more and more lazily slapped-together floating head collages. Which summer movies got the benefit of truly inspired work?
Best Posters
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Director: Matt Reeves
Starring: Andy Serkis, Tony Kebbell, Gary Oldman, Judy Greer, Keri Russell, Jason Clarke, Apes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a bit of a forgotten blockbuster, a surprise hit in 2011 that hasn't endured in the public mindset as much as Fox would have hoped. This poster is here to help you remember what you liked about Rise: it had lots of realistic, sympathetic, angry ape warriors! Now they have babies! This is the kind of stark image that stands out in a theater lobby, and the other posters (which feature war-painted apes looking directly at you) are just as arresting.
Release Date: July 11
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Peter Dinklage, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, with Halle Berry, and Evan Peters as Sonic the Hedgehog