The Best and Worst Movie Posters of 2015

Long before viewers took seats in theaters or even watched previews for 2015's biggest films, we got a sneak peek thanks to the movies' posters. From Joy to Straight Outta Compton to Spectre, check out our ranking of the art, ahead.

One of the most iconically tragic pop stars of the new millennium, rendered here in a just askew image. The perfect tantalizing shot for this tantalizingly searching documentary.

And the prize for "Best Use of Negative Space" goes to this unexpectedly low-key poster from Marvel Studios. How do you sell a superhero who sounds hilariously non-threatening? You turn the bug into a feature. (So to speak.)

Beloved movie star. Simple concept. Good tagline. The easy victories are the hardest to come by.

Big star. Concept? Tagline? No need.

Big stars? Sure, but more importantly: How about those hats! As an act of marketing, it's a complete self-immolation, but it's one of the year's most dorm-worthy one-sheets.

Another adventurous poster from Marvel, albeit with more blunt-force power. Then again, when your two most financially successful superheroes are facing off in one movie, maybe blunt-force is the best force.

Planes! A flying money mountain! When you're selling a remake nobody wanted, best to go as big and goofy as possible.

WITNESS.

As a movie, Rock the Kasbah is a snooze. But as an opportunity for the further sanctification of Bill Murray as the Saint of Memes, at least the movie produced this gloriously colorful poster.

Nothing can hold back the exultant power of the Barden Bellas. (Not even some odd skin-smoothing photoshop.)

As subtle as the movie isn't.

The unfurling nightmare of Denis Villeneuve's borderland drug thriller gets encapsulated perfectly in this epic rendition, with relative innocent Emily Blunt backgrounding images of a weaponized Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro.

It's the Avengers, except real and with better music.

A captivating portrait of swooningly emotional, high-tension intimacy, this mother-son shot could be mistaken for a casual Instagram photo — except for the cubed corner of the sky, implying that even the outside world can feel like a prison.

The fine art of the illustrated poster has mostly faded into history. Thank goodness for history buff Quentin Tarantino, whose newest Western gets a groovily subdued, blood-on-the-snowscape poster.

Yes, this poster for March's Batquel is a shameless riff on an iconic poster for 2008's beloved The Dark Knight. Yes, it still looks pretty nifty.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters, a stained-glass-window aesthetic, and an embedded Christmas Carol reference in the tagline? Well done, boys. Well done.

Big star. Hanging off a plane. Are there planes in Joy? I don't think so.

Witness the moment when Amy Schumer went global.

Horror films often bring out the best in designers, encouraging clever and subtle imagery. That's especially true of this funny-weird quilt design. And how nice: They mentioned M. Night Shyamalan's name!

S. Craig Zahler's rollicking Western adventure is part throwback rescue odyssey, part horror freakout. But this poster is a pure wonder of retro '70s design, with the silhouetted face of kidnapped Samantha O'Dwyer etched in the red sun looking down on the men who could be her rescuers — or her fellow victims.

Crying now.

The year's must-see indie gets the year's must-put-on-your-wall poster, with stars Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor etched in silhouette against the purple sunset of the SoCal skyline.

That most American of rituals — a boy, a girl, the back seat — rendered with lovingly freaky paranoid tension.

How we will miss you, Hunger Games advertising campaigns, and your darkly comic riffs on political propaganda and Orwellian advertising!

Are they walking? Standing still? Is that a living room or an office? Is "smugcore" an adjective? It is now.

Guy Ritchie's spy romp was a stealth delight buried in August. This poster helped do the burying: A colorlessly bland cast shot with the year's least helpful tagline.

Dear Academy Voters: I was in Carol this year. I've never heard of Pan. Love, Rooney Mara.

Look, I'm obviously excited about Snow White and the Huntsman But Without Snow White. But this is no way to sell a confusing sequel-spinoff. People will think Thor lost his hammer!

The problems with the latest James Bond movie started early, with this confusingly opaque one-sheet. The bullet hole crack kinda forms an octopus, see? Y'know, like the insignia for SPECTRE, that group from those 40-year-old Bond movies! You remember SPECTRE, right? Right????

Here's how you don't sell a horror movie: Promising that everything that used to be subtle about this franchise has gone completely out the window.

Whuh-oh, that one guy's all, like, wearing a collared shirt, but that other guy's all, like, on a motorcycle. Crazy!

How long do Chipmunks live for? Not long, right? Thank heavens.

TURTLE BRO WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES BRO?

In the end, the collective might of the Fantastic Four couldn't defeat their worst nemeses: Photoshop.