The heroic pose may be timeless, but in Friedrichs painting it has a novel (I believe) interpretation in that we see the hero from the back, and he is dark and

The heroic pose may be timeless, but in Friedrichs painting it has a novel (I believe) interpretation in that we see the hero from the back, and he is dark and unspecific, while the vista is bright. So rather than focus on the hero as an object (as we do with e.g. Michelangelo David), we identify with the hero (because he is "generic" and have the same position as we have relative to the image) and contemplate the vista along with him. We become the hero. I believe this is the effect that the movie posters also strive for.