The 25 most iconic Star Wars movie posters of all time
By Joel Leonard
10. Star Wars official poster II
While the previous Star Wars poster did a lot of playing with the negative space on the poster, this advertisement for Star Wars took the opposite approach by trying to put everything in the movie somewhere on the poster.
You’ve got your three main characters, all with blasters in hand taking up the center of the poster. Darth Vader is once again looming over the top of the image, brandishing his lightsaber with an early design of the Death Star towards the top of the poster as well. In adaptation to these characters you have Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, and R2-D2, and Grand Moff Tarkin also crammed in around the three main heroes.
TIE fighters and X-Wings cover the poster along with a Y-Wing as well, to make sure as many different ships as possible are represented. A scene from the moisture farm on Tatooine even makes an appearance, tucked in behind Leia.
It’s interesting to note that despite being the most famous face in the movie at the time, Alec Guinness is given a relatively small amount of real estate on the poster, and even less is given to Peter Cushing, one of the few other actors who would have been recognizable to a wide audience at the time. It’s clear that the big selling point is the action, adventure, and the spectacle that Star Wars is bringing to the big screen.