Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Last night’s The Force Awakens episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live was short on actual news, but at least our folks were somewhat charming. Below the cut, J.J. Abrams reveals the first word of the movie, Harrison Ford and Chewbacca settle their long-time feud, and Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are defeated in Star Wars trivia by a 7-year-old, because of course.
Continue reading “Videos: Highlights of J.J. Abrams, The Force Awakens cast on Jimmy Kimmel Live”
Director J.J. Abrams and stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher will be on a special The Force Awakens episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight.
Most recently, Ford showed up on Kimmel’s Halloween episode.
Live begins at 11:35pm ET on ABC; Tune in or don’t forget to set your DVR!
J.J Abrams, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega were on hand for last night’s Saturday Night Live… Among others.
Now Wired has blueprints of Starkiller Base. Or the set, anyway.
→ New Leia and Han banners have been spotted rotating on a digital billboard in Times Square. The Rey, Kylo Ren and Finn ones have been spotted before, but you can’t beat John Boyega’s reaction. UPDATE: Here’s Daisy Ridley’s.
→ Much ado has been made about the recent George Lucas interview on CBS, but I think Full of Sith has the best take on it, so I’ll leave it to them.
→ Waiting on better copies, but if you don’t mind fuzzy ones, there’s a new Disney Channel TV spot that contains our first (brief) look at Maz Kanata actually in the film, and another commercial that features two new X-wing pilots – one we think is Jessika Pava (as seen in The Weapon of a Jedi) and a Sullustan.
→ There’s a cute new TV spot with Threepio, Artoo and BB-8 from British telecommunications provider O2. Like the Verizon ad we’re seeing over here, it doesn’t contain any actual movie footage. (Is that Sean Bean narrating?)
→ A leaked Look and Find book has some spoilers for The Force Awakens. Read it if you dare. (Via Making Star Wars, who notes that it confirms some thing they’ve already leaked.)
This is, per JoBlo’s count anyway, our fifth TV spot for The Force Awakens.
On that note, over at Empire, John Boyega talks about holding the lightsaber for the first time.
Discussion topic: If the First Order is raising kids to be stormtroopers, why does Finn have an American Outer Rim accent? Do only the officers get the Proper Imperial Elocution package?
I’m not sure if we’re coming up on the last of the Entertainment Weekly stuff or not (my issue did not arrive in a timely fashion, as per usual, and the app is awful) but this afternoon brought interviews with Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. Addressed is some of the backlash:
“We see through the eyes of children that they’re not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They’re not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone’s skin. That should teach us something,” Boyega says.
The bigots trying to sully things? He has no time for them. “We’ve been having a continuous struggle with idiots, and now we should just force them to understand – and I love the way I just used Force there, by the way – just force people to see this is the new world,” he says. “There are loads of people of different shades and backgrounds. Get used to it.”
Ridley talks about Harrison Ford and the Millennium Falcon:
She even got some sage starship-flying advice from Harrison Ford. “I was doing random switch-flipping and Harrison kind of put his hand out and said, no, everything had to have a purpose. Like, you flip a switch and then you see what it does, before you do anything else,” she says. “I was probably flipping switches too quickly!”
There was one other awkward moment. “Um, probably when I sat in his pilot seat,” Ridley says. “There’s a shot where I pilot the Falcon by myself. And then [on another day] Harrison and I went to film together. I went to get into the pilot seat and he was like, ‘That’s mine,’ and I was genuinely mortified. And J.J. was sitting there like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ And, you know, I moved into the co-pilot seat.”
And Boyega on lightsabers:
“It started in rehearsals. We had [Kylo Ren actor] Adam Driver. That was the first time ever I had a stick in my hand that I could pretend was a lightsaber, which was the first stage of excitement,” he says. “I had to do all the sound effects and stuff by myself.”
In front of the cameras, he was given a much more elaborate prop. “That’s when I got the real saber, which is blue, it’s lighted, and just looks really epic,” Boyega says. “It felt monumental in my hand. I knew not to play like I used to when I was a kid, but to actually use it in serious combat for a scene. It’s absolutely crazy to have in your hand. It’s a bit heavy but it’s worth it. “
I believe that’s confirmation of something Making Star Wars posted last month, about how custom versions of Force FX lightsabers were used on set to help with lighting and other effects.
There’s a rumor that Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) got one of those (rumored) Episode VIII roles, but it’s based on Rian Johnson and John Boyega following her on Twitter, which, okay. To be fair, plenty of us read a random Rian Johnson tweet as a hint towards Gugu Mbatha-Raw, so maybe there’s something to it after all. Verdict: Maybe!
There’s another rumor going around regarding Finn’s last name. I won’t even link anyone who’s running it because it’s based on an unofficial description from a third-party Amazon listing, and shockingly, that is nowhere near a sound source. Verdict: Ha ha, no.
→ Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are adorable for ASOS; On Entertainment Tonight, Boyega geeks out of John Williams and getting to hear his own theme.
→ Also: An interview with Kathleen Kennedy, and a short Millennium Falcon-centric write-up of an article that appears in the members-only Disney 23 magazine. And hey, Domhnall Gleeson!
In addition to today’s poster ambush, we also got Daisy Ridley and John Boyega each get their own cover for The Hollywood Reporter’s ‘Next Gen’ issue. They both get pretty lengthy interviews. Be sure to watch the videos: The origin of ‘peanut’ is revealed, and who stole Harrison Ford’s golf cart?
The Force Awakens stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley both posted Instagram photos of themselves with composer John Williams, and Boyega tweeted, too.
We saw part of this on Instagram earlier, but now John Boyega has posted his full reaction on Facebook.
Also finally weighing in? BB-8.