Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Drew Struzan pumped out a great deal of iconic poster art from all of our childhoods. He dipped his artistic toe into franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Harry Potter and while his resulting poster art had a huge impact on all us crazy kids hearing him talk about those days is a little sad.
He was just looked upon as an unimportant marketing employee and was hardly ever given any consideration as an artist. For instance, he did his fantastic The Thing poster without having seen the film... and he was only give a couple days to start and complete it.
Now he's quasi-retired (ie he only takes projects he wants to do and doesn't crank out art for just anybody) and doesn't have to deal with that kind of crap. When JJ Abrams called him to ask him to do some art for the upcoming Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens it wasn't a guarantee that Struzan would have accepted the gig.
Turns out Abrams holds Struzan in much the same light we regular fanboys do and not only provided Drew the script, but has also shown him roughly half the movie.
Movie-Weekly got Struzan on the record about making the D23 poster and found out that above info. And what does Drew think of what he's seen?
"I can tell you and the fans this, honest to God, it is far and away probably going to be the best Star Wars you've ever seen."
I've been lucky enough to spend a little time with Struzan over the last few years and can say that the man doesn't tow a company line, so when he said the above sentence he wasn't playing politics. He could care less at this point in his life about being liked withing the studio system.
You will notice he couched his comment a little bit by throwing "probably" in there, but that's understandable. The man has the script and half of the film, most likely in a rough cut form, to base his impressions on at this point. What is clear is that he was very happy with what he saw.
That jibes with much of what I've heard through the grapevine. At least the folks at Lucasfilm think they have something special on their hands and I think I speak for all fanboys and fangirls out there when I say I hope they're right!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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