As we all guessed after that tweet two weeks ago, The Hollywood Reporter is now saying that Peter Mayhew will return as Chewbacca in Episode VII.
Mayhew last donned the Chewbacca suit in Revenge of the Sith, and many speculated he’d be returning after he recovered from knee surgery last year.
The Hollywood Reporter makes this a much stronger report, but we only consider information confirmed if it’s openly from Lucasfilm/Disney or appears on StarWars.com.
If this ends up being true, and it’s not until Lucasfilm confirms it, I’ll be extremely glad that he’ll be back. I was getting nervous with his knee operation that it was looking like he wasn’t coming back.
A lot of folks speculated he had the knee thing done so he COULD come back. (Though, y’know, walking in general is a pretty good reason all by itself.)
*sigh* Chewbacca has died by this point (35 ABY) but I’m sure he’ll actually be playing Lowbacca. Yeah. How cool would that be? A Wookiee with a bronze lightsaber… I mean he’s like bff with Jaina Solo right? Or perhaps he’ll play his son Lumpy-I-mean Lumpawaroo. Oh yeah. That would be pretty rad. Ahh who am I kidding… it’s going to be Chewbacca which will completely change the universe! Mostly it will make all this information I have in my head not very useful. I mean not that it was incredibly useful in day to day life but… Last it will make me hurt inside a little to have invested so much time reading the whole dang New Jedi Order Series. :( I’m sort of kidding around, I’m mostly excited, but is anyone else feeling like this? Is there some “Thing” that the new movies change that would be just too much for you? For Example: Leia and Han never did get married? Luke died before we even got to this movie…of the Rakghoul plague lets say. Mara doesn’t exist? Thrawn was a bedtime story that Han Solo made Up to tell his kids? DARKSABER was never built!! The Emperor was never cloned? Trioculus never made his grab for power?! The possibilities are endless!
There are so many issues with the existing EU that I don’t mind if they ignore it. The most I’m hoping for is a few bits and pieces make it.
There are good things in the EU, but the EU as a whole? Meh. I’m ready to move on.
I WANT to be surprised. I WANT something all (or at least mostly) new.
I just love the EU. Both the silly and the good. Star Wars would not be what it is today without it. I think they’ve had a pretty good handle on continuity actually. I’ve always loved being able to say that Star Wars in generally all just one timeline. Everything seemed to fit together pretty well. Anyway, you have to be careful when you talk about EU at this point, I feel like people get really defensive about it one way or the other. Me.. I’m excited for the sequels. It will be fun but if I had a choice I’d want as much of the EU as intact as possible. We were joking around at lunch today and someone said that the first movie perhaps is just a very long text crawl explaining what has happened between Episode 6 and Episode 7. We were just imagining it saying something like. Then Luke had to fight a clone named Luuke, then there was the Great Waru incident. :) Then… But what is the one thing for me? I think mostly just the family. As a friend of mine said at lunch today almost all the EU is based on Han and Leia getting married and having twins. If they don’t or didn’t I think that would pretty much obliterate everything.
First off, we can thread comments now, so be sure to click the first reply link you see under the comment you’re replying to.
Secondly, I think my view of the EU can be best summed up with this Clueless GIF:
I worry that THR is going down the Latino Review road: drawing big, obvious conclusions from a lot of circumstantial evidence but without any real sourcing. When they’re right (and since it’s obvious, they usually are), they look smart. But a few wrong predictions and the credibility is gone.