You may not have heard, but one of your favorite artists has recently passed away. Drew Struzan, who was perhaps the greatest poster artist of the 20th century, left us earlier this week, leaving behind a legacy of incredible art through his designs. It’s no exaggeration to say that everyone has seen at least one of his pieces, even if they aren’t aware — after all, knowing who makes movie posters is mostly for cinephiles, right? Until his retirement in 2008, his brilliant work helped shape the expectations of thousands of people walking into the theater, so he had a rather big stake in whether you’d like the movie you were about to watch or not.

But this feeling has been lost for a while now, and not only since Struzan’s retirement. It’s rare nowadays to find movie posters that evoke the emotions that his work brought, although there are just as many amazing artists now as there were in the late past century. Now, most theatrical posters look almost the same, and this isn’t about creativity. Instead, it’s about business, as you’d expect, specifically about how marketing campaigns and technological innovations have influenced and changed, mostly for the worse, the art of movie poster design.

Movie Posters Used To Be Just As Artistic as the Movies Themselves

Any cinephile worth their taste in film has at least one poster hanging on their walls, and those are often as treasured as if made by classical masters of the past. That’s because, although what hangs on walls may be only a printout, posters used to be handmade by actual artists and professional designers, blurring the line between marketing and art. Before television, posters would often be the audience’s first and, sometimes, only contact with a movie before watching it, so artists had to go as close as possible to capturing the essence of the film in a single picture. Like any marketing piece, posters had to be effective, but, like art, they required meaning; otherwise, they just wouldn’t work.

Drew Struzan’s work kept in with this tradition admirably. He was part of a generation of genius designers who elevated the art of movie posters in the late 20th century and turned theaters almost into museums. Roger Kastel‘s Jaws poster, for example, is both colorful and terrifying, like a shark-infested beach. Philip Gips‘ poster for the original Alien was minimalistic, but highly effective — that egg is hatching, and whatever is inside is coming for you. Brothers Tim and Greg Hildebrandt captured the essence of the whole Star Wars franchise in their poster for the original movie, and the only people that managed similar feats ever since are Kastel with his poster for The Empire Strikes Back and Struzan himself with his work with the special editions and the Prequel Trilogy.

Those are the people whose work you’ve surely seen at least once, and it’s probably what first pops into your head when thinking about these movies. This happened not because they were gods, but because, as creative artists, they understood their jobs and performed them well. The Thing, for example, has one of the most chilling posters of all time, and Drew Struzan made it before even watching the movie, yet it fits the movie’s concept like a glove. Only someone with the correct references and a perfect understanding of their medium could deliver something like that, but, with the entertainment industry growing around cinema as a medium, movie posters ended up changing, too, losing most of this original artistic essence.

Most Movie Posters Nowadays Are Risk-Averse, Bland Digital Montages

With all these references to incredible posters from the past century, it’s hard to think about equally striking artwork in our era. There certainly are many, like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Poor Things, but, apart from movies with awards aspirations, we don’t see great posters that often anymore. There certainly aren’t any big studio tentpoles with great theatrical posters, and those now look the same: crowded with characters, aligning everyone symmetrically, and putting the title card on the bottom. There are occasional smirks among expressions of toughness or sadness, as well as characters turning their heads in unnatural ways, thanks to poorly done editing and near-zero originality.

The reason for this is, of course, business. As marketing specialist Michael Barnett told The Guardian back in 2016, “Most of the time, marketers will choose the low-risk option, which is to pick the one that market research tells you will appeal to the people most likely to watch your film.” That’s why most superhero or Disney films have the exact same poster, for example. Conciliating the multiple interests behind a movie is also a challenge, including directors, marketing teams, and the designers themselves, as artist Alex Griendling mentioned: “Like anything designed by a committee, these competing perspectives often steer the final product to a ‘safe’ solution.” Posters are primarily marketing pieces, so the lower the risk, the safer the result, and the artistic aspect of it is sacrificed for that end.

The very role of poster artwork in most films’ marketing campaigns is diminished nowadays. With social media being the main driver behind everything, it seems like it’s better to have a viral trailer or clip, or even a weird popcorn bucket, than a great poster, which is often relegated to promotional material. There is no shortage of brilliant artists around to make beautiful artwork to promote movies; yours truly has Matt Ferguson‘s beautiful poster for the Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith re-release on his wall. But artists as talented as Ferguson should be doing theatrical pieces hanging on theater walls, not just living rooms. This is a symptom of how niche the interest in movie posters has become (mostly for cinephiles, right?), but there are now even bigger problems around.

With AI on the Rise, Movie Posters Risk Becoming Even Duller

When The Fantastic Four: First Steps released its very first posters, there was some controversy, because they looked like AI. Marvel later denied it, but, given how much and how quickly AI has been improving lately, it won’t be long until we simply can’t tell the difference between real art and artificial pieces. If even AI “actors” are being considered by the industry, what’s stopping executives from considering this for other things, too? Seeing how movie posters aren’t given the same importance in marketing campaigns anymore, and how cost-effectiveness is always the priority, they are bound to become a lost art, a niche interest for hardcore fans.

Technology itself isn’t the problem, of course. Drew Struzan’s posters were handmade, but it was another time. Nowadays, with so many tools around to facilitate artistic work in digital design, making poster artwork may be easier than back then, but it’s still an essentially creative job. If writers use computers, for example, why shouldn’t designers? The purpose of technology is to help artists streamline their creative process, not to replace them. That’s something the industry still needs to understand, however. You can prompt AI to make a poster in Struzan’s style, but it will never be beautiful, because art isn’t about pretty pictures; an artist’s work is what essentially gives their pieces value.

Struzan’s passing means the loss of a unique artist, but it should also raise awareness of how little true artistic work is valued nowadays. His posters are iconic and worthy of hanging on walls in both theaters and living rooms, but there are countless great artists out there whose work is just as brilliant, but don’t have an opening to prove it because of the industry’s obsession with profit. Yes, posters are marketing pieces and, thus, are about maximizing a film’s profit, but there used to be an artistic side to them that favored the film, too. Perhaps it’s naïve to hope for beauty to take precedence over profit someday, but, until then, it seems like posters will remain niche, unfortunately.