How Movies Use Billboards to Talk
When we think of billboards, we often imagine bold branding, catchy slogans, and towering images along highways or city streets.
But in cinema, these signs often take on a much deeper role — transforming into emotional cues, symbols of resistance, or narrative tools that reflect the world within the film.
In this post, we explore how billboards and signage in cinema contribute not just to atmosphere, but to storytelling itself.
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards is arguably the most direct example of a film where outdoor advertising drives the plot. After her daughter’s unsolved murder, Mildred Hayes rents three billboards on a quiet rural road, emblazoning them with confrontational messages addressed to the town’s police chief.
“RAPED WHILE DYING.”
“AND STILL NO ARRESTS?”
“HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?”
These signs are not passive — they ignite public outrage, media attention, and personal conflict. In this story, the billboard is a weapon, a tool of protest, and a desperate cry for justice. It turns a typically commercial space into a deeply personal and emotional one, challenging the viewer to see public communication in a new light.
- The Substance (2024)
In The Substance, a visually haunting and thematically layered film released in 2024, outdoor advertising plays a subtle yet powerful narrative role. Through the large floor-to-ceiling windows of the protagonist’s apartment, a massive billboard featuring the mysterious figure “Sue” is constantly visible — not just to the audience, but to the main character herself.
This billboard doesn’t deliver a clear promotional message. Instead, it becomes a mirror of the protagonist’s deteriorating mental state.
Rather than promoting a product, the billboard acts as a psychological trigger — a symbol of obsession, pressure, and the societal demand to be seen as beautiful. In this way, The Substance uses outdoor advertising not for exposition, but as a quiet force that shapes the character’s inner world and choices, echoing broader critiques of commodification and body image in modern culture.
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Stanley Kubrick — my all-time favorite director — created Dr. Strangelove. It is a dark comedy that sharply satirizes the military leaders of the US and USSR during the Cold War. Although the film doesn’t feature traditional commercial billboards, it is filled with “signage-style” political language. The most famous example is the slogan displayed on military base signs:
“Peace is our profession.”
This phrase mimics the tone of commercial advertising but delivers one of the most profound critiques of the Cold War arms race. Against the backdrop of a looming nuclear conflict, the slogan becomes an absurd “national advertisement,” mocking the packaging and hypocrisy of power rhetoric.
Billboards in movies are more than just background—they express emotions, reflect characters’ minds, and sometimes deliver political messages. They help tell the story and leave us thinking.
If you know any cool examples of billboards in films, please share them with me!
See you next time!
Joel