Category: star wars

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Solo’s L3-37 is “a completely different kind of droid”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s droid L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story is “a self-modified droid,” co-writer Jon Kasdan tells Entertainment Weekly. “The idea is that she’s sort of a mutt, if you will, of various parts of different kinds of droids who has improved upon herself.”

“She’s a complete individual in the galaxy,” Jon Kasdan says. “We wanted to have it be a completely different kind of droid than you’ve ever seen in the movies. And we definitely wanted it to be a female. We thought it was more than time for that.”

She has a “working relationship with Lando” that is “very sophisticated” and has evolved over the years, Lawrence Kasdan says.

She’s very smart and advanced for a droid, “and Phoebe is hilarious and brilliant and really helped bring that character to life in ways that are funny and surprising,” Ron Howard says.

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Emilia Clarke on Solo: Qi’ra and Han “grew up together”

Emilia Clarke gives Entertainment Weekly some context on Qi’ra, her character in Solo: A Star Wars Story, including that there’s a “romantic side of things.” (Sigh, so much for all those half-sister theories.) But mainly, that her and Han go way back.

There is a thing throughout the relationship you just can’t put your finger on. And that’s Qi’ra. Every time you think you have got her number you realize you haven’t at all. [Laughs] Which is really hard to play. The goal is that the shadow of Qi’ra is there in Han as a character that we know. This girl is another texture that makes up who he is when we first meet him.

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How Harrison Ford pitched in on Solo

Harrison Ford may have finished up his run as Han Solo, but he did have some input on Solo, in the form of insight on the character.

“What [Ford] did so beautifully for Alden was he talked a lot about what he remembered when he first read Star Wars, and what George had done with Han. Who the character was and the conversations he had for so many years with George about how that character developed,” [Kathleen] Kennedy says. “He gave Alden that kind of insight which was invaluable. There were several times in the course of making the movie where Alden would actually recount some of the things that Harrison had pointed out. I think that was really, really helpful to him.”

We also get confirmation that Solo is keeping Han’s backstory as an orphan, and how that played into his bond with Rey in The Force Awakens.

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First Solo details from Entertainment Weekly

Solo gets its first Entertainment Weekly cover, and a handful of new images. Let the feeding frenzy begin! Here’s what we’ve learned:

→ The train-thing is called The Conveyex, and Han (with Chewie!) is indeed trying to steal something from it.

→ We still don’t have a last name for Qi-ra (Emilia Clarke) but she has known Han “longer than anyone.”

→ The droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is Lando’s sidekick. Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and Val (Thandie Newton) are “career crooks,” while Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) is a crime boss.

→ So much for my theory that the clean Millennium Falcon is a flashback scene – There’s a picture of Han on it with Beckett and Chewie.

→ Mimban confirmed, and it is… Muddy.

Coming up: Interviews with Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and Clarke, more details about the Falcon.

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Solo lowdown: Teaser breakdown, what may have inspired that speeder

Now that we have a trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars Explained has two videos, on the tv spot and the trailer, which goes a bit into Han’s Legends origins for comparison. Some furthur breakdowns from io9, /Film and Mashable.

A neat (and very probable) Easter Egg – does Han’s speeder echo a very specific classic car? Given how much of it wee see in the teaser, I would not be at all shocked if this is confirmed in the lead up to the film.

Costume designer Glyn Dillon says that the text on the helmet of the yet-unnamed antagonist is not Aurebesh.

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Lucasfilm calls up… The Game of Thrones guys?

No, not George R.R. Martin. (He has enough on his plate.)

Today’s big out of left field Star Wars announcement is that Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will “will write and produce” a new series of Star Wars films. The new films won’t be saga films, and they’re also separate from Rian Johnson’s trilogy.

“David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today,” said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. “Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.”

I am… More skeptical than usual about this one. I do enjoy Game of Thrones, but there’s plenty that Benioff and Weiss have done with the series that I’m less than gung-ho on. This feels like a very Trevorrowesque decision (more “edgy” white dudes?), and we all know how that turned out… Well, at least there (probably) won’t be any sexposition scenes, but more troubling is that these are dudes who seem to think that Confederate is a good idea.

In a Disney earnings call, CEO Bob Iger says the pair are “focused on a point in time in the Star Wars mythology and taking it from there.”

This does, however, seem to give us a more complete picture of Lucasfilm’s post-Episode IX plans. While I have no doubt we have not see the end of the saga films, a standalone “trilogy” and “series” seems like a good start to fill in a nice big gap… Like perhaps a decade or so?