Drew Struzan

Famed movie poster artist Drew Struzan has died. His long and prolific career is most distinguished for his work with Spielberg and Lucas on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. But not only did he do a lot more posters than that, he did more iconic posters.

Okay, I'd argue Back to the Future is really more of a Spielberg movie than credited director Robert Zemekis' movie (I say the same thing about Who Framed Roger Rabbit). But I've always liked the wrong geometry of the Delorian in this poster which you don't see in the posters for the sequels (though they were also painted by Struzan).

He also did posters for John Carpenter movies, including the iconic posters for The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. The latter is one example of many in which Struzan's work kind of exceeds the quality of the film he was promoting.

Kurt Russell looks like he's inviting us on an unabashed decadent pulp adventure which makes it disappointing that he's doing a John Wayne parody in the film itself.

He did several posters for off the wall, '70s sex comedies and horror films. In between, he did a couple of nicely Mucha inspired posters for The Seven Percent Solution and Harry and Walter Go to New York.

He seemed to end up painting Harrison Ford often. Outside of Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, he also did the posters for Blade Runner, The Frisco Kid, and several Indiana Jones video games and collections.

Of his Star Wars posters, I like the ones where he leaned into romance the best, Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones.

With Attack of the Clones, as with Big Trouble in Little China, Struzan's poster is a bit better than the movie itself. At least it has no cgi.

He worked with Guillermo del Toro as well and his poster for Pan's Labyrinth nicely gives us a preview of the film's symbolic production design with a symmetrical composition of Struzan's own devising.

Here's an artist whose work will continue to be in our eyeballs and minds for eternity.