Taken Poster Media Analysis

The letters are written in blood, which the conventional action adventure audience would like as it is connoting violence and death. They also look like they’ve been stamped onto the page, which is iconography of a typical government-involved action adventure theme.

Red colors connote violence and death. Both are conventionally associated to the action-adventure genre and are generally expected by the audience when they see a poster like this. The dark colors and red colors help the institution to sell their films because that is the first conventional iconography that people will see.

We can see the Eiffel tower, showing the film is set in Paris; this is a big city which is the conventional location for action-adventures. Dark clothing connotes a serious theme; it connotes that the character doesn’t want to stand out, he wants to stay hidden. It is also archetypally a very masculine look which represents the character as strong and powerful.

Liam Neeson is a set actor in the action adventure genre, so people who see him on a poster will straight away associate it with the action adventure genre. He is in many action adventure films such as Non-stop and unknown. For the institution, this is good because even just having his face on the poster gives the audience an idea of what the film will be like and it helps sell the movie.