Improving on Emma Stone’s Tattoo from Birdman

It was no surprise whenBirdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) walked away with the Academy Award for Best Picture last night. The film had everything you want out of a Best Picture—amazing acting performances, spectacular cinematography, and an original story that kept audiences still thinking about the film weeks after viewing it. As tattoo aficionados we always like to see ink in our movies and we spend an inordinate amount of time looking for great tattoos in between bites of popcorn. So it should go without saying that we spent a lot of time checking out Emma Stone’s performance and ink.

There’s no denying that Stone deserved to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar but we’re glad she wasn’t nominated for “Best Tattoo in a Motion Picture.” OK, we know that isn’t a real category, but it should be! Digressions aside, the feather tattoo on the Stone’s shoulder was pretty terrible. The feather turning into flying birds tattoo has become a pretty popular trend in the last couple of years but it’s not the familiarity of the piece that irked as much as the execution.

First off, the placement is lousy. As the birds take flight out of the feather you should be able to imagine them flying away; here it looks like they are merely on their way to Stone’s back. Secondly, it just looks like it was shoddily done. Given that Stone’s character was supposed to be just coming out of rehab maybe the idea was for the tattoo to look like it had been homemade or done on the cheap. But even if that was the intention we can still point out that it is poorly drawn, especially where the birds are coming out of the feather. It should look like a seamless transition, instead it looks like the birds have no business being there.

Click through the gallery below to see some example of how Stone’s tattoo should have looked (in our humble opinion, of course.) You can also see more feather tattoos here, bird tattoos here, and tattoos inspired by films here. And if anyone actually goes and gets a tattoo of Michael Keaton walking the streets of New York in his underwear please let us know immediately!