The push for Star Wars: The Last Jedi is officially starting and Lucasfilm has used Star Wars Celebration to debut their first teaser poster. The sequel to The Force Awakens has alluded to big roles for Rey (Daisy Ridley), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). With there being three prominent Force users featured in the film, plus the return of Finn, Poe, and Leia, this will certainly be a bigger movie.
However, even with the cast expanding for the sequel, the focus will still be on two Skywalkers and one whose lineage is a mystery. If there was any doubt this is the case, the film's first teaser poster makes that abundantly clear.
Director Rian Johnson introduced and unveiled the first teaser poster for The Last Jedi during the film's panel at Star Wars Celebration. The beautifully designed poster has Rey holding the lightsaber to the sky and the light splits the poster in half, with one side featuring Luke and the other Kylo.
With so many studios often taking an easy approach to photoshopping together jumbled posters, it is fantastic to see this first poster for The Last Jedi not fall into this category. It is wonderfully designed with Rey at the base, but even though she is the smallest figure, her lightsaber is what divides the poster up and allows for the dichotomy between Luke and Kylo's use of the Force. It also continues a trend among Star Wars posters that feature a lightsaber shining extraordinarily bright, something that was used for A New Hope and The Force Awakens to varying degrees.
To help set this one apart however and provide a nice contrast to the opposing halves of the poster, the initial blue light from Rey's lightsaber shifts to red as it continues. Star Wars has always been about the light vs the dark, but also trying to find the perfect balance between the two. This theme is illustrated wonderfully with this design and with Luke being covered in the red light as well, it could be possible he is not much of a Jedi anymore and is rather not affiliated with either side, which is why he wants to get rid of the Jedi Order.
Outside of the design of the poster, it also is no mistake who the three members featured here are. To the surprise of no one, Rey is going to have another prominent role that will see more of her backstory told. Luke meanwhile was only teased in The Force Awakens, but his presence here and in the official Last Jedi trailer make it clear he is also going to be an important piece to the plot. Kylo on the hand, had a big role in the prior film and is going to return scarred and hungry to complete his training under Supreme Leader Snoke. How, when, or if all three of their paths will cross has not been made clear yet, but Kylo will likely not be too pleased when he hears rumblings of Luke (reluctantly or not) training Rey.
Source: Lucasfilm
