The marketing departments at movie studios are in the business of boiling the success and failure of movies down to simple formulas. Based on the posters from the first half of this year, the formula they seem to have settled on is "Movie Posters MINUS Face EQUALS Money."

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While the Lincoln poster is admittedly badass, it appears that Abraham Lincoln is actively hiding his face from us for no apparent reason. If he wanted to hide his identity, he probably would have chosen something besides a Lincoln stovepipe hat to hide behind. The entire premise of Haywire is "beautiful woman realistically beats the shit out of people," and its poster opts to hide her face and instead go for more of a Slash from Guns N' Roses look. We're not sure what Now You See Me is about, but it seems content letting us assume it's a caper set in an early iPod advertisement.

Now there's a logic at work here that, like all bad ideas, makes sense in certain contexts. For instance, some blockbusters opt to show a simple logo instead of actors.