The Weirdest Foreign Star Wars Movie Posters

Let's be honest. If you didn't read Polish — and if Mark Hamill's, Harrison Ford's, Carrie Fisher's and Billy Dee Williams' names were printed — you'd have no idea this is an Empire Strikes Back poster. Rather, at first glance, it comes off as some kind of Orwellian, Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque Big Brother propaganda poster — with subtle hints of fascism — while still remaining superbly cemented in space-age science fiction. So... what gives?

Jakub Erol, like his Hungarian counterparts, had the luxury of being able to operate with total artistic freedom while making his Star Wars posters. The Soviet Union allowed, to some extent, western films to be shown in Poland and Hungary, but Hollywood had absolutely no say in how their promotional materials were made — hence why these weird posters were even allowed to exist in the first place. Because capitalism simply wasn't going to happen, state-controlled institutions took charge of commissioning artists — like Erol — to interpret "Film Amerykański" in their own ways. Therefore, artists were given almost complete and total freedom to make their posters as weird as they wanted — assuming, of course, they weren't actively trying to subvert state power.

Whether or not this Imperium kontratakuje poster appears to you as a statement about totalitarianism is up to personal opinion, but it's safe to assume that more than a few Communist Bloc Star Wars fans — and artists — drew parallels between the Galactic Empire and the Soviet Union.