Drew Struzan’s favourite Drew Struzan movie poster: “It’s just a guy standing there”
To make a movie great, apart from what occurs onscreen, you also have to factor in the trailer, the soundtrack and perhaps, the most underrated component of cinema, the poster.
Even in the current digital landscape, a movie’s promotional image is still a vital component of its success, the first thing a potential audience member sees, and if it doesn’t grab them immediately, they’re definitely not going to bother with the whole thing.
There have been countless iconic film posters released over time, and one man who is responsible for more than his fair share is Oreganian illustrator, the late, great Drew Struzan, who recently passed away on October 13th, 2025. Remaining the undisputed king of the art form, some of his works include posters for Blade Runner, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Muppet Movie, and the fact that all of these incredible designs came from the brain of one man simply beggars belief.
Naturally, when you’ve got a list of achievements a mile long, picking a favourite can be a real chore, but that’s exactly what SlashFilm tasked Struzan with during a 2021 interview, and he decided to go for the one that reflected a certain element of his creative process.
“My favourite one showing open-endedness is The Thing,” he once revealed, recalling, “They called me about nine o’clock at night and said, ‘Do you have time to do an illustration for us?’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ So, they asked me, ‘Have you ever seen the movie, the ’50s movie, The Thing?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I saw that movie’. They said, ‘That’s it’. That’s the information I got about what they wanted me to paint… My thinking was, ‘Okay, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know who’s in it. What’s different about it, why people should come see this one if they’ve seen the one from the ’50s?’ That’s when I came up with the idea. I’m not gonna paint anything. I’m going to paint it in an open-ended way. See what you want to see or don’t see. If you know the painting, that’s what I did. It’s just a guy standing there.”
Depicting a blacked-out figure standing against a white, snowy location, reminiscent of the film’s Arctic setting, with a bright light shining out from its face and its arms outstretched in a manner that could suggest it’s human, but could also be something a lot more sinister, the poster for John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing is beautiful in its simplicity and precarious vibe.
When Empire released a list of the ‘50 Best Movie Posters Ever’, they described The Thing as “the ultimate in Drew Struzan poster design”, awarding it 43rd place, and a main reason behind that was his lack of knowledge of the film’s plot as a serendipitous highlight, forcing him to go off his feelings alone. The core theme of the film is uncertainty, and Struzan’s poster forces its viewers to immediately consider that something might be wrong with what they’re looking at. It’s an image that has been reprinted time and time again on everything from posters to T-shirts to baseball caps, decades after it first put moviegoers on edge, standing testament to the creator’s core desire for its enduring commercial appeal.
As the film world comes to terms with the loss of a true hero, it’s important to look back at Struzan’s work and be grateful for what he gave to us, as without him, the movie poster would be a considerably duller place.
