So, here is my brother-in-laws version of the final poster:
The original is on the left, and his version is on the right.
He de-saturated everything except the central figure of Rey, because she is supposed to be the key for this first movie, and doing that naturally leads your eye to the figures below her.
He changed the angle of Finn’s lightsaber so that it was more perpendicular to the diagonal formed by the staff in Rey’s hand and the main blade of Kylo’s lightsaber. Visually, this looks less out-of-place.
He also added the tan border, and had some elements break the border, like some previous posters. He also replaced the logo with one that he found on the ‘net that he liked, which again tied more back into the previous movies.
Overall, I think he’s right that the original poster was just plain bad and lame, and his version is … less bad and lame. But it was just something he whipped up really quickly and didn’t have a lot of time to work on it.
I think it looks pretty cool. But maybe that’s just me.
[EDIT: Corrected the name of the character holding the blue lightsaber. Apparently, I can’t tell my Poe’s from my Finn’s. 
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