New 'Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker' Poster Pays Tribute To Rare 'Revenge Of The Jedi' Poster

We're exactly one week away from the arrival of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Sneak preview screenings will begin on Thursday night next week and likely go well into the early morning. But Disney and Lucasfilm are showing no signs of slowing down their marketing mayhem yet. In fact, a recently released The Rise of Skwyalker poster just might be the best of the entire campaign, and it even pays tribute to one of the most rare Star Wars posters of all time.

In case you're not familiar, this poster is actually a re-creation of the first poster release for Return of the Jedi. However, at the time of the poster's release at Christmas 1982, the movie was still being called Revenge of the Jedi. George Lucas came to the conclusion that Jedi don't seek revenge, and opted for something that sounded less aggressive. Because of that, the original Revenge of the Jedi poster is one of the rarest  and most valuable pieces of Star Wars memorabilia. Here's a comparison:

The artist behind this poster is Rich Davies, who does an outstanding job of recreating Drew Struzan's signature style on this poster. There have been some minor aesthetic changes to make it fit with the modern marketing, such as the font at the top which says "The Saga Concludes." It's a shame the title treatment couldn't easily be reworked to look like the Revenge of the Jedi title, but we'll take what we can get. Speaking of which, we're hoping this poster will be available for purchase at some point. The only problem is that this is a collaboration with the art group known as Poster Posse, and while it was endorsed by the official Star Wars social media team, it may not be released as a poster to collect.

You can check out the rest of the movie posters released for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker over at IMP Awards. Otherwise, the movie opens in theaters everywhere next week on December 20, 2019.