Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
There’s still content from Celebration dropping, as Carrie Fisher talks to James Arnold Taylor backstage about Leia, the slave outfit, reprising Leia, and poor Gary’s exhaustion. Also joining James backstage are Ian McDiarmid and Anthony Daniels.
Plus there’s the Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee interview from the livestream.
Did more than 60,000 Star Wars fans really attend Celebration Anaheim? We know the con sold out of passes, but we don’t know (officially) what the actual number is. Previous Celebrations (IV in Los Angeles and VI in Orlando) have topped out at 35K.
Backstage at Celebration, Mark Hamill chats with James Arnold Taylor about Star Wars and shared some family photos from the Return of the Jedi set. (The Force Awakens stuff starts at 7:20. #Beardwatch!)
A bunch of other Celebration videos have gone up over the past few days as well, most pulls from the livestream, including interviews with Billy Dee Williams, Ray Park, Joel Aron, Doug Chiang and Christian Alzmann, among others. And then there’s con highlights that played during the Closing Ceremonies…
You couldn’t step into The Force Awakens exhibit without seeing at least a dozen cameras snapping away, so I have no doubt you’ve seen much of this already. There may be many like it, but under the cut is mine. Continue reading “Photos: The Force Awakens exhibit at Celebration Anaheim”
So. Celebration. A new trailer. You know the drill. Continue reading “I vaguely remember someone crying: Best #StarWars, #SWCA and #TheForceAwakens tweets for April 15-20”
The Force Awakens star John Boyega returned to Twitter and Instagram on Thursday, where he revealed – after the fact – that he’d spent some time roving the convention while wearing a clone trooper helmet.
Who’s the lucky fan who got to duel with him, I wonder?
UPDATE: He wasn’t the only one…
Celebration is winding down here in Anaheim, and it was just announced at the Closing Ceremonies that the next one will return us to London’s ExCel, the site of the first Celebration Europe back in 2007. It’ll be July 15-17, 2016, and tickets will go sale tomorrow.
We’re also seeing the return of Fan Relations, with Lucasfilm vet Pete Vilmur at the helm.
Big thanks go out to Mary Franklin and all the folks at Lucasfilm and Reed for bringing all this to us!
A lot of fans have already seen the premiere here, but for the rest of us, here’s the season 2 trailer that dropped earlier in the day.
The newest Star Wars stars discuss Celebration, their Star Wars histories, filming The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams and more behind the scenes in Anaheim. There’s also video with Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy, Carrie Fisher and Anthony Daniels, and Mark Hamill and Peter Mayhew.
The atmosphere here in Anaheim for the reveal of yesterday’s new trailer for The Force Awakens was amazing, perhaps the top Celebration moment ever for me. The crowds are insane, the Arena was huge and we were up on the third tier, but the excitement was palpable. And the trailer itself… Well, you saw it.
I doubt I’ll be able to put together any coherent thoughts about it while still at con, but thankfully there are plenty of others who’ve taken on the task. We also saw several behind-the scenes photos (Hitfix has the gallery) for the very first time.
For a general overview, check out Christian Blauvelt’s take over at the BBC, or the shot-by-shot analysis at Vulture. Meanwhile, Devin Faraci at Badass Digest is pretty sure that BB-8 will be the film’s breakout character, and I’d find it hard to argue with him – I don’t think anyone was disappointed when the droid rolled out on stage. Magnets, what can’t they do?
Another big draw here is The Force Awakens exhibit, which mostly features items we’ve seen the trailer, but is still amazing. And it reveals at least one thing that immediately caught the interest of supergeeks – new names for what has become of Empire and the Rebel Alliance. The Imperials of TFA will go by ‘the First Order,’ while the Rebels are now ‘the Resistance.’ Curious, no?
And as for Jakku, the desert planet we saw in the teaser? Well, the battle that downed that Star Destroyer is one “not long after the Battle of Endor,” and it’ll be downloadable for the Battlefront game on December 8.
And with that, we’ll leave word from John Boyega, who returned to Twitter yesterday:
Star Wars is Back #SWCA pic.twitter.com/ixMRQLmDKW
— John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) April 16, 2015