Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
There will be a Hall H panel for The Force Awakens at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, July 10, StarWars.com revealed today. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and “special guests” will be present.
There are several other panels, including two for Star Wars publishing. (Del Rey will be at ‘Part 2,’ Friday at 11 a.m.)
There’s some great stuff from Lucasfilm head honcho Kathleen Kennedy at Vanity Fair today.
George made it personal. He just made a movie that meant something to him. And I think that’s probably the biggest challenge for anybody stepping into this is that they can’t spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are going to think of the movie. They have to come at it from the point of view of, What does this mean to me and what does it have to do with me? Frankly, I don’t think great movies ever get made unless there’s some aspect of that going on between the creator and the story that’s being told. It can only become emotional [for an audience] if it’s operating on some kind of personal passion.
She also the emotional resonance of Star Wars, the old school experience, and how she and Steven Spielberg ended up hiring J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) to fix up those old Super 8 films.
Vanity Fair isn’t the only magazine borrowing some Star Wars mojo this month. Wired today has ‘the definitive oral history of ILM,’ with George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Muren and more. (Including J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson.)
Today, Vanity Fair has an interview with The Force Awakens costume designer Michael Kaplan, which actually feels surprising revealing for this point in the process. Namely, the stormtrooper uniforms are sturdier and Empire and Rebels First Order and Resistance are more color-coded. On that note, a new photo of Oscar Isaac in his base jumpsuit has emerged.
→ Pip Andersen talked a little bit about his role.
→ A few more tidbits from the Japanese interviews: Kathleen Kennedy said Daisy Ridley was trained in the bōjutsu fighting style, which means she’ll actually be fighting with the staff we’ve seen the trailers.
→ Hasbro has announced a Star Wars panel for SDCC. Maybe they’ll finally show some stuff for The Force Awakens?
→ Rumor corner, take 1: There’s something floating around a third trailer for TFA may be on Pixar’s Inside Out, and that it’s already been shown at a “Disney blogging conference.” However, another attendee has denied it.
→ Rumor corner, take 2: A Youtube video that supposedly shows an effects scene being filmed has popped up.
How much of The Force Awakens is George Lucas? Well, per the Vanity Fair article (much of which still isn’t online, which means you’re going to be reading dozens of interpretations until it is) the answer is: Not a lot. I’m off to see if I can find a copy…
Kathleen Kennedy says a new Indiana Jones movie is in the cards… One day. “When it will happen, I’m not quite sure,” she told Vanity Fair. “We haven’t started working on a script yet, but we are talking about it.”
So soon after Celebration, we’re not expecting any reveals for May the 4th this year – maybe an official announcement of the poster that’s been spotted around? That Italian ‘star’ map that’s floating around is only a parody, so don’t put a huge amount of stock in it.
→ Missed in all the Celebration hubbub (well, I tweeted it) was this nice article from the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba, where Kathleen Kennedy talks about some of The Force Awaken’s casting choices. Kennedy and Daisy Ridley also made an appearance in Japan, but nothing particularly groundbreaking has come out of it. Lots of pictures, though.
→ Jedi News discovered some The Force Awakens merchandise. It’s all fairly tacky kid-oriented stuff, because of course that’s what’s going to leak first.
→ Star Wars Underworld points out a Ralph McQuarrie influenced detail from the Celebration Anaheim TFA exhibit.
→ Spoiler corner: Making Star Wars has a few bits on a scene late in the film and Han Solo’s emotional state.
We got a decent look ahead at Rogue One today, as Lucasfilm gave us a description and a brief teaser trailer for Rogue One. We even got an official name for what we’ve been calling ‘spinoffs’ and ‘standalones:’ They’ll be ‘Anthology’ movies. The panel consisted of Pablo Hidaldo (doing his best Letterman act,) Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, Story Group lead Kiri Hart, director Gareth Edwards and ILM’s John Knoll, who originated the idea.
The trailer isn’t online yet and isn’t likely to (not officially, anyway) but here’s the description:
A band of resistance fighters unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans in Star Wars Anthology film, Rogue One.
Felicity Jones’ character is a Rebel soldier, and it’s set in the ROTS/ANH gap, though closer to ANH.
The teaser, which was produced by ILM since they won’t start filming until the summer, featured a pan across a forest, a TIE fighter, and a glimpse at the Death Star through the atmosphere. The voiceover was Obi-Wan’s lines about the Jedi from A New Hope, and “the absence of the Jedi is omnipresent in the film,” Edwards said. “It comes down to a group of individuals who don’t have magical powers that have to somehow bring hope to the galaxy.”
This will be very much a war movie, and the crew has people who’ve worked on Zero Dark Thirty, Saving Private Ryan, and Blackhawk Down. Edwards said he doubts he’ll ever be able to work with so many high caliber people again; Folks will drop anything to come work on Star Wars.
Pablo asked Edwards about his ‘geek cred,’ and Edwards revealed that he spent his 30th birthday going to Tunisia – even drinking blue milk at the Hotel Sidi Driss, where the Lars kitchen was filmed. There were pictures. They were adorable,
Josh Trank, who’s helming the next Anthology film, was “under the weather,” so we didn’t get anything for that.
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.
J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy’s “special guests” included the new trio – Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac – who confirmed some of what we’d already heard and/or guessed about their characters. We also got to see the (real!) BB-8 and Artoo, plus their makers, and of course Anthony Daniels, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Peter Mayhew also showed up. I’ll be back later with more, but for now just keep an eye on @clubjade, where I’ve been far more active than on the blog. (Sorry!)
In the meantime, you can backwatch the panel yourself!
And another video that StarWars.com dropped on us today:
Here’s just the BB-8 portion of the livestream: