This holiday season, Star Wars fans are flocking to movie theaters to see the final installment in the Skywalker saga. Since Star Wars came out in 1977, we’ve grown older, some of us have had kids of our own, some have bought homes, held more than a few jobs, some of us may even be looking as old and grizzled as Luke Skywalker himself. No matter how we turned out in life, Star Wars fans who were children or young adults in 1977 recall the year that changed their lives immesuably. An entity named NS Brick Designs has sparked a sense of wonder and nostalgia for older Star Wars fans with a LEGO rendition of the original Tom Jung pulp poster that started it all.
Luke’s robe billows open revealing his massively muscled chest while a subservient, sultry Leia slinks at his feet holding a blaster. This wasn’t the reality of the movie; Luke wasn’t all that ripped and it turns out Princess Leia could hold her own and wasn’t going to play second fiddle to a farm boy from Tatooine. But pulp images, especially this one inspired by the fantasy art of Frank Frazetta, have a way of capturing the imagination and bending perceptions a bit. Now in modern times, we are calling the newest movie the last of the Skywalker saga, but we have new heroes to look up to such as Finn, Rey and Poe. Thanks to a dedicated fan base and thanks, in part, to images like this one, the magic and lore of Star Wars has persisted with us most of our lives and will likely remain with us for generations to come.