The 25 most iconic Star Wars movie posters of all time
By Joel Leonard
18. Return of the Jedi special edition
This is the final poster in the series that was created for the 1997 special edition releases. As it is the third and would sit on the far right if all three posters were to be placed side to side, for this poster all of the action is moving from left to right.
Sitting opposite of the New Hope poster, this is the poster where every spaceship is heading from left to right, with the stars in the negative space of the image doing the same to really create the illusion of dynamic movement. What’s interesting to note is, because these three posters really function as one giant poster, no character appears as a floating head more than once anywhere on the three posters. Because Luke, Leia, and Han are all on the poster for A New Hope, they don’t appear in floating head form for the rest of the posters. Instead, the characters featured here are ones we haven’t seen featured on Special Edition posters yet, including Chewbacca, Yoda, and Jabba the Hutt.
Where the poster for A New Hope featured the harsh colors of a desert planet, and The Empire Strikes Back poster featured the cool blue color pallet of a frozen Hoth, the green coloring that bathes this poster draws inspiration from the planet that is most identified with the final chapter of this trilogy, Endor.