Star Wars Posters: Shopping 'Small' Pt. 3

"Return of the Jedi"

Welcome to Part 3 of a series of Guides directed at finding 'smaller' STAR WARS posters for the beginner and avid collector alike, so you can actually fit this wonderful saga onto your walls.  As in the previous Guides on this subject, it is also about finding the posters in it's native English, to reflect the film's original country of origin.  If you haven't read the other Guides I've written on this topic, please check them out - they may prove to be helpful or even entertaining!  Let's get started.

1983 Original Release: Style 'A' Insert (14" x 36")

This simple but beautiful poster is an easy first choice with fans.  The blue coloured lightsaber sure does take on a whole new meaning now, then it did in it's original release.  I think the poster kind of speaks for it's self.  I can add though, about the long time story/rumour of the hands in the artwork are those of George Lucas, that he actually only 'posed' for the artist to show how he wanted it to basically look.  Then the artist pretty much filled in the rest.  What do you think - is it Luke's hands & lightsaber or is it a 'haunting' image of a then unknown Anakin with his lightsaber?  But since they BOTH lost their blue sabers with a hand each, the only other one who had blue lightsaber and still had both his hands was Obi-Wan.  Who knows?  But I like when a poster makes you think about things like that.  The next time your asked by someone: "Who's this with the blue laser thingy", you'll probably start saying something like: "Luke, I think".  This is my personal preferred choice over the Half Sheet of this same Style.  It really is as blue as it looks, the titling looks sharp stretching across the top, and the poster is to only showcase a long thin lightsaber - you don't need anymore excess room for that.  Prices are still not too ridiculous, I haven't seen this poster over-priced all that often.

1983 Original Release: Style 'A' Half Sheet (22" x 28")

There really isn't anything 'wrong' with it being displayed on the Half Sheet, but I think that you can see why the Insert is a more preferred choice.  They take up a lot of unnecessary room just to display the lightsaber and the title.  The 'boxed' titling is actually my favourite of the two main styles, and I believe this would have been the first time this titling would have been seen - at least in North America.  The British Quad 'Advance Style' also featured this boxed titling, so I'm unclear which one would have actually shown it first.  It's still a very nicely balanced poster, and it depends (as always) on your taste and personal preference.  I'm not too crazy about the colour though.  This poster is not blue, it's a greenish blue, which makes the poster look like it was left out in the sun and faded a bit - in my opinion.  Sometimes this poster is priced a little too high, probably because you don't see it as often as the Insert.

1983 Original Release: Style 'A' Australian Daybill (13" x 30")

The Daybill of Style 'A' is also quite a wonderful way to display this artwork.  The poster is much more vibrant and the image is a lot more lighter.  It may just be me, but the U.S. counter-part seems a little more 'gloomy' next to this bright and cheery poster.  The Daybill is on thinner paper and the Insert is on thick-stock (thin cardboard) - it does not make much of a difference in their appearance.  As you can see in this photo, the Daybill is folded.  All of the Daybills are machine folded before going out to their respective playhouses and theatres.  It does not harm the image in any way!  The folds are more like soft 'rolls' in two locations on the poster - I've never seen any 'white lines' with those folds on my Daybills, because of the incredible care they take to fold them.  If you found an Insert or Half Sheet folded, there you will see a real mess.  With lines and cracks, plus the poster weakens in those spots and slowly falls apart.  If you do buy a folded U.S. small poster, get it fixed and linen-backed as soon as you can.  Or place it away safe until you can have, or afford, to have the poster restored.  This particular Daybill Style is far less available than it's second Style (shown a little further down in this Guide), which places the price far more higher.

1983 Original Release: Style 'B' Half Sheet (22" x 28")

This Half Sheet is my absolute favourite of all the Style 'B' posters.  Great collage artwork featuring all the main characters.  You also get a little more of Leia at the bottom, where the title would usually be placed.  This image could do without the very bad drawings of the X-Wings at the top - needed to fill in the space I guess.  Although the "Star Wars: New Hope" Style 'A' had a swarm of X-Wings which wasn't accurate either, but at least it looked like you were in for a heavy battle scene.  I love the colours used for the 'boxed' format of the titling - red on black, it really sits bold and prominent in the top left corner.  Everything is balanced and not too busy looking.  Wonderful colour in the artwork as well.  I thought that the white vertical line that divides the credits from the image might have looked out of place, but it is almost necessary for the poster to look correct.  The Insert also uses this divider line with less success.  This Half Sheet is still quite readily available and still at a fair price - you won't break the bank on this one.

1983 Original Release: Style 'B' Insert (14" x 36")

As mentioned with the Half Sheet, the white horizontal divider line doesn't really go well at all on this poster.  They could have blended the title across Leia, like the One Sheet does.  If you had looked at my Guide for "Empire Strikes Back", you would have seen how successful the were with blending the title with the artwork on the Style 'A' (Gone With The Wind) Insert.  They took the imagery right down to where the credits start - this one just stops, then 'restarts' again, not their best overall compilation for a poster.  Also, Lando is almost out of the picture (a main character), only Jabba's head is featured, and the X-Wings at the top are barely shown at all (which is actually a plus, in my opinion).  Usually Leia is shown right down to her belly button, but it cuts off just before that point.  Plus, Luke looks like he's holding a 'light-dagger' and not a lightsaber, because most of it was squeezed out.  Is why I'm so harsh on this poster is because it looks like a classic that "could have been".  Instead it looks thrown together, which ruins this fantastic artwork and leaves this presentation flat.  I still love the red titling against the black though.  But it's up to everyone's individual taste.  This poster was in large abundance, you shouldn't have a problem finding it - and for a really good price!

1983 Original Release: Style 'B' Australian Daybill (13" x 30")

With the Daybill, you can see the difference and understand more about what I am talking about.  First of all, the title blends in with the artwork (like it should).  Luke's got enough of a blade showing now to actually deem it a 'saber', plenty of room for Lando (respectfully), and a big welcome back to the rest of Jabba The Hutt!  The X-Wings are still not completely there, but this poster is way better than the Insert in every way.  This would be the one I would choose, by far, out of the two.  This poster shows up often, especially here on eBay, but the price can get very steep - it's a very big seller!

1983 Original Release: Belgian Poster (14" x 22")

This is one of the most desired and liked "Return" posters of all.  This is actually the Belgian poster, but this glorious artwork hailed from the French Posters.  The problem for most of us is the French posters that featured this art are way too big!  I think the Large French Sheet is around 60" x 80" (I don't have the exact size on me at this time, but it's big!), and it's heavily folded.  They also have a rare horizontal Banner size, I think it was close to 8' x 20' (maybe?) - I do remember that there was absolutely nowhere in my house that I could either display it nor roll it out onto the floor to even look at it.  That's why this Belgian poster is so great, you get the gorgeous French artwork, the titling is in English (the French one's were not: "Retour Du Jedi" - close though!), and it's small and affordable!  As you can imagine, I just love this poster to death.  Great imagery, beautiful mix of colours, the only plain part is the credits at the very bottom - but who cares?  Yugoslavia also used this artwork on their poster (20" x 28"), and I admit that they did a far better job about filling the bottom half of the poster with the rest of the imagery.  The Belgian poster cuts of Luke & Leia at the top of their legs, the Yugoslavian poster continues to show the rest of their bodies.  The Yugoslavian one also made the artwork more important than the credits, there's very little of them even listed and their placed real small into the bottom corners  But, their titling is not in English - and there's a whole lot of it.  The Belgian poster isn't costly and shows up on a semi-regular basis.  If your interested in the Yugoslavian poster, I've only really seen it for sale the one time.  It's got a bit of worth to it, so expect to pay at least a little bit.  That one sold for just under $100 US - so that'll give you an idea at least.

1983 Original Release: 'Advance Style' Japanese poster

This beautiful little masterpiece is from Japan.  To me it almost says 'everything' about the saga, and yet nothing at the very same time.  Very simplistic, yet the colours swirl together so perfectly, it's just a mind-blowing piece of art.  Featuring only C-3PO & R2-D2 (our narrators through this unbelievable movie achievement), the lightsaber blades of Luke & Darth, and a field of space in the sky that can either look like destruction or the humble beginnings of a new and developing universe no-one has seen before - or both.  Simple titling at the very bottom, in English!  And no credits, dates, 'Tag Line" - nothing but simplicity.  This artwork was done by a very prominent Japanese artist I understand (I don't have his name, unfortunately), and that this was indeed a very unprecedented special event.  I left out the size of this eye-catching poster from Japan, because I've never had the pleasure of having a copy in front of me to measure it.  What I do know is that it is very small, probably equal or close to the Belgium poster.  This poster is so impossible to find, you would almost think that it was just a legend - but it's out there, somewhere.  So why torture all of you with it?  Mainly because Lucasfilm had such a high-volume demand about this little treasure, that they had made up a load of Lithograph Prints of it - and they ARE out there.  This was about 2 years ago I believe (2006?).  It was, of course, made as a 'Limited Edition' and there were only so many printed.  They printed up enough to stay available on the Lucasfilm website for a month or so, but obviously they didn't print such a range where everyone was going to get one.  So there is an 'Official' Print of this poster available.  It would not be listed as a 'Masterprint'.  They printed it close to it's original size, as to try to keep with it's original ratio (respectfully).  I have a feeling it would be a little smaller than the Masterprint size (11" x 17").  By all means, I hope you find the real one!  But my point is that the Print is out there and available.  It's value would be a real head-scratcher.  I would be quick to think none, but even these 'Limited Edition' Prints officially from Lucasfilm do end up becoming worth something these days.  Either way, I would buy it.  I wouldn't pay a lot for it - it didn't even sell for that much in the first place.  It's highly worth a search!

1985 Re-release: Insert (14" x 36")

This, sadly, was the very last year that the movie companies printed and used these wonderful smaller thick-stock sized posters.  At least it was in time for one of two last Re-release's of "Return of the Jedi" on it's own (the other was for it's 10th Anniversary - only a One Sheet was issued then).  The rest of the times it was as a "Trilogy" with the other films playing along with it.  This very simple Tom Jung artwork I think pretty much said it all in it's presentation.  It looks like one of those 'final round-up' shots, where you get all of the main characters together for one last time - to basically say goodbye.  When I first saw this poster all those years ago, the thought that quickly came into my head was: "No more STAR WARS, it's over".  Never, honestly, in my life did I really think that George Lucas would actually go back and go through all that trouble and time to make any Prequel.  Even though the poster sounds 'promising', telling you at the top of the poster to "RETURN - to a galaxy far, far away", the artwork says otherwise.  Chewbacca, the ever 'expendable' character is however absent, again!  They don't give him a medal, he doesn't get a final picture on the poster.  This size looks absolutely fantastic with this imagery!  Jung didn't go for vertical length again, so it fits just perfectly.  And you might not see it too clearly in the picture above, the colour that runs between the bottom of the characters and to the top of the start of credits below - the colour is a beautiful blend of purple and black, almost like a marble look.  Plus with the title placed over it in a light blue, it really brightens up the poster a little bit.  They don't have this colour on the One Sheet, just blue from top to bottom.  So it makes this size poster just a little more special.  The Half Sheet is also wonderfully displayed, thanks to someone who knows where to place credits when you have the artwork fully on the left side of the poster - fantastic!  The Insert isn't the easiest to find and they sometimes ask way too much for it.  The same pretty much for the Half Sheet as well, but the Half usually costs far more than the Insert.

This is the only real small size in the Anniversary realm, as like "Empire":

"Return of the Jedi: Special Edition" 1997 Re-release: British Mini (12" x 18")

Artist Drew Struzen comes through again with the final of the three "Special Edition" posters.  Great art, balance and colour.  Chewbacca is finally featured as an important main character, shown prominently at the top of the poster.  I like to refer to this poster as the "popurri style", because it's pretty much everything that was left over or not used yet in the other two posters previously.  The only thing I didn't take much of a fancy to was the titling, it's very bulgy looking (like the way comedy-themed posters do their titling) and it's definitely the worst that it has ever been presented.  Imagine if the name "Coke" was completely changed in it's writing to make it look more 'serious', it'd be a disaster.  Not quite sure why Lando was left off of all three posters.  But if it makes him feel any better, Grand Moff Tarkin wasn't included as always either (even though Lando was in two of the films) - Hmmm.  Anyway, this Mini is cheap like the other two and can usually be located through sellers from the U.K. - or have a connection to the U.K.  They really do look great together, whether it's side by side or 'stacked' on top of each other.  I also think these Mini's stand on their own, you won't feel that push to complete the 'set' if you really never planned on doing so.

There was a whole lot more writing with this Guide.  That's mainly because of all the different choices and countries involved.  Plus the other movies, the posters look pretty straight forward, but the "Return of the Jedi" ones always need more explaining - because of how different every artist approached their version of the film poster.

That's Part 3 of my Guides focused on collecting 'small' STAR WARS posters.  This one dedicated to Episode VI's "Return of the Jedi" - I hope that you enjoyed it!

Thanks for reading.

If you found my Guide either HELPFUL or ENLIGHTENING, Please leave a "YES" Vote at the bottom of the page.  Thank you.