INTERVIEW: Creating ‘Star Wars’, ‘Indiana Jones’ & ‘Blade Runner’ Masterpieces With Mark Raats

Back at Supanova on the Gold Coast, we were lucky enough to catch up with a man who’s been in the movie biz for decades, and has worked with some of the biggest directors of all time, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg! We’re talking about the legendary poster artist Mark Raats, the man behind the iconic painted artwork for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Blade Runner, and more.

To call Raats’ style influential would be an understatement; you can probably see it now in any ‘floating head’ style poster for a Hollywood blockbuster. In a crowded market, and with plenty of other work inspired by his own, several aspects of Raats’ work make his posters stand apart from the rest. It’s all about intentionality, composition, and respecting the work of the artists who laid the foundation.

“When I started doing this, I was only working with George [Lucas] and four or five other people, and of course, you know what George likes, he’s very specific about what he wants,” Raats said. “But you also have to tie it to the brand. So if I come on board and I’m suddenly doing an Indiana Jones piece, there’s a brand that was set up years ago by Richard Amsel when Indiana Jones first came out. So when I’m doing any layout, I’ve got to bring an artistic flair, but one that ties into the existing brand, and that brand has already established the kind of layering and floating heads that you might have.

“Today, of course, you’ve got the Marvel stuff that comes out, because every actor has it in their contract that they’ve gotta be on the poster, so there’s like 18,000 faces on one poster! That’s not the artist’s fault, that’s what’s required, but to me that’s a nightmare!”

Raats still gets called upon to work his magic on newer posters, too! Some of his favourites are ones you might not expect.

“Working with Disney, as I’ve done in the later years, is more complicated because they have a very different policy when it comes to what kind of faces, and what kind of layouts. So the ones I’ve enjoyed doing the most with Disney were Solo [A Star Wars Story], because when I did the poster for Solo, there wasn’t a brand, there was a Star Wars brand, but not a trilogy brand, or prequel, or sequel brand, it was its own movie.

“So what I did with that one was, I made it more about a space cowboy vibe, kind of like a Serenity thing. And also you didn’t know the actors at that point, you knew them from other things, Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones [for example], but you didn’t associate them with Star Wars, so to put them on the page in the ‘floating head’ things didn’t add any value, so why do it?”

But you’ve still got to add a little something for the fans!

“I put Chewie there because everyone knows Chewie. So I made sure that it had the space cowboy vibe, but that it had Chewie, so we still had somebody to relate to. That was a lovely job because they said, ‘Do what you want to do.'”

If you walk down the cinema halls these days and take the time to examine the posters, it seems like ‘crowded and cluttered’ is the winning formula, making sure the prospective audience knows who’s in it, and a bit of what to expect. But as Raats knows, sometimes, simple is best.

“When I did the teaser poster for Blade Runner 2049, I literally only had Harrison’s face holding a gun, and it was awesome, no other stuff around at all, and it’s a really powerful poster because of it.”

Less is more! Raats’ timeless work is proof that a poster is not merely an afterthought to advertise a movie; a good poster sparks curiosity, imagination, and is a piece of art all in itself. There may be no such thing as the perfect movie poster, but you can get pretty damn close with the work of Mark Raats!

You can meet the man himself at Supanova in Sydney (21-22 June) and Perth (28-29 June).

Lead image by Nathan Black