Out this week: Vanity Fair, Star Wars #5

The official street date for this month’s Vanity Fair was yesterday, so if you still need a copy of the article that drove fandom nuts on the 4th you’re probably more than safe to go looking. (FYI, certain things about the article have been wildly exaggerated, but that’s pretty much par for the course.) UPDATE: The full article is now online.

But if you’re here for the usual books and comics, there’s always Star Wars #5, dropping on Wednesday. Preview? Preview.

J.J. Abrams talks Star Wars references and tone

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Today, Vanity Fair has their J.J. Abrams interview, where The Force Awakens director talks about not overexplaining things, his weirdest moment, and capturing the tone of Star Wars. Also, a horrible Max von Sydow pun.

Now, what sparked a lot of discussion today was this bit:

Well, what’s cool is we’ve obviously had a lot of time [during the development process] to talk about what’s happened outside of the borders of the story that you’re seeing. So there are, of course, references to things, and some are very oblique so that hopefully the audience can infer what the characters are referring to. We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something. I think that the key is—and whether we’ve accomplished that or not is, of course, up to the audience—but the key is that references be essential so that you don’t reference a lot of things that feel like, oh, we’re laying pipe for, you know, an animated series or further movies. It should feel like things are being referenced for a reason.

Earlier, they talks about how A New Hope just dropped in references to things like the Clone Wars, and as someone who’s experienced great anvil fatigue over the past decades, I greatly appreciate a return to that, whether it be random whatevers that happened between trilogies or old stuff we already know.

Vanity Fair’s The Force Awakens photoshoot is up

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And now, the actual Vanity Fair photoshoot is upwith one more photo set to go out in their email newsletter. We do get a name for Lupita Nyong’o’s CGI character: Maz Kanata, a pirate who has a castle populated with a variety of riffraff. We also get a nice shot of Oscar Isaac and his X-Wing, Rey (and J.J. Abrams) on Jakku and Abrams with Kathleen Kennedy, John Williams and Lawrence Kasdan.

UPDATE: And the last photo has been spotted. Gwendoline Christie is confirmed as Captain Phasma, the chrome stormtrooper. You can read most of the article at VF as well, plus the prequel spreads are back up!

More The Force Awakens teases from Vanity Fair

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A little bit of Vanity Fair’s cover story on The Force Awakens went up at midnight – along with a behind-the-scenes video that gives us a peek at what some of the pictures may be – including a helmetless Kylo Ren (Yes, he’s Adam Driver. Shocking!)


There’s also a bigger version of the cover, but no more pictures – yet. One is set to go out in VF’s email newsletter tomorrow afternoon, though. And head below the cut for a few screenshots from the video.

The issue will be available digitally on May 7, and on newsstands May 12.

Continue reading “More The Force Awakens teases from Vanity Fair”

In the news: Live-action something, maybe; George; Amira Sa’id; Happy Meals; Mark Hamill

Rumorville: Perth Now is reporting that the music for a Star Wars TV series filmed in Sydney that “could have 400 half-hour episodes” (umm…) will be recorded in Perth by Malcolm Luker. Okay then! Of course, George Lucas (or a good impersonator) was spotted down under last week. I guess we’ll get the full story (or not) in November.