Poster Pride & Prejudice: case study STAR WARS

Where we look at one Scorching piece of artwork that generates excitement for what it is advertising.

Then on the flipside we also have a Torturous piece that makes you wonder how it ever got approval to promote the product...

We are now seven movies into what will end up being a nine film series for Star Wars.

With so many entries already and international releases there are of course hundreds of variations and international releases as well as fan art of the movie posters used to promote each film.

I didn't want to scroll through loads of images so here we go with the winner and loser.

The Scorcher

The colour pallet chosen for The Empire Strikes Back fully reflects the mood of the film.  It is much darker material with sinister connotations and those themes are mimicked to perfection with the use of the purple and black colours here.
The composition is also spot on with our main three heroes clearly front and centre and Darth Vader menacing in the background.  The secondary trio are well placed too just to the left of Luke and drawing your eye to the film title.  Also the planet Hoth is clearly noticeable as well.
It is a close call between this and the poster from A New Hope which depicts Luke Skywalker holding his lightsaber aloft with Princess Leia looking all seductive next to him.  But with the later revelation that she is his sister, that just makes that depiction all sorts of wrong!

The Torture

The prequels quite rightly are much maligned.  Attack of the Clones whilst being held in slightly higher regard than its predecessor was lumped with possibly the worst poster of all seven films released to date.  This is just plain bland.
Too much use of beige washes out all the features on display.  The eyes are all too shiny and bright, especially when you consider Padme's sparkle with the sun beaming in the background!
Placing the clone in the middle is an attempt to draw in the Boba Fett fans.
Most criminally though is that Obi-Wan Kenobi has been made to look like a magazine model Jedi.