Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Empire magazine has unleashed their November issue, which has The Rise of Skywalker as the cover story. So far, we’ve got a brand-new look at the Knights of Ren and a Rey-and-Kylo set of covers.
Continue reading “Rise of Skywalker: New look at the Knights of Ren, legacy lightsaber”
Galaxy’s Edge is opening soon, and we’re starting to get some details. The build-your-own lightsabers will cost you about $200 (which isn’t that shocking – that’s just a little more than a standard ForceFX lightsaber, which is – or was – the highest quality mass-produced lightsaber toy.)
You’ll also have the option to build your own droid. It’s $100 for a custom droid, and $150 for the DJ R-3X. To be fair, he is really neat:
Now that we’ve addressed the price tags, here’s a nice piece on the design process for the staff – err, cast member – uniforms.
That John Williams theme? You’ll probably not heard it-as is. Instead, it serves as “the musical foundation” for what you’ll hear in the park.
Also: Enforcing the time limit! Droid tracks! Bathroom breaks!
Vanity Fair is following up their blockbuster cover story and portfolio with a number of The Last Jedi sidebars today.
→ First up, how seriously Adam Driver takes his role as Kylo Ren. Includes priceless anecdotes from Mark Hamill and John Boyega.
→ Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson dodge questions about the title.
→ Rey’s lightsaber is now officially Rey’s lightsaber, says Pablo Hidalgo. (Sorry, Anakin.) And what about Luke’s? (The green one.) Well…
→ What’s not in The Last Jedi? Romance. There’s “no one-to-one equivalent of the Han-to-Leia, burning, unrequited love.” Johnson says. “In our story, that’s not a centerpiece.” Good.
→ And finally, Kathleen Kenndy on Carrie Fisher, Episode IX, and other future films.
Thinkgeek (of course) is now selling a set of lightsaber-themed screwdrivers. The Vader and Yoda hilts are flatheads, and the Luke hilt is a Phillips.
Between Wired’s J.J. Abrams interview, Entertainment Weekly and all those TV spots, we seem to have officially entered the “faster, more intense” phrase of The Force Awakens marketing. (No, you haven’t seen too much, calm down.) Here’s some stuff that got sidelined:
→ Settle your bets: The crossguard blades on Kylo Ren’s lightsaber “are raw power vented from the primary central blade,” per the description on display at Disneyland’s Star Wars Launch Bay. (IGN has a tour.) We already knew he built it himself, but the design is “ancient.” (via Reddit)
→ Speaking of Kylo, we haven’t seen much of Adam Driver lately, but he did tell Vulture that he found SDCC to be “intense” and “surprisingly moving.”
→ The Force Awakens is skipping some early award shows, says The Wrap, but the only one here you may have heard of is the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It will be out in time for consideration for the Academy Awards.
→ Variety says there was indeed new music from The Force Awakens in the Shondaland spot.
→ The cover for The Force Awakens novelization has been spotted on the Random House catalog (by Roqoo Depot first, I believe) and it’s… The poster. ‘Kay.
And in other movies…
→ Could Episode VIII return to Ireland? We know they’ve already shot on Skellig Michael, RTE thinks they’re looking at another location in County Kerry as well.
→ Jedi News claims to have the codename for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Han Solo spinoff.
“I’m excited about it as much as anyone else. I saw the trailer and it looks like he absolutely nailed it and it feels right,” Ewan McGregor said on The Force Awakens at the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival this weekend.
He’s not sure about Kylo Ren’s lightsaber crossguard, though: “If you fight with a lightsaber properly you don’t need one.”
As for Obi-Wan Kenobi:
Would McGregor return to the role, if asked? “I’ll say it publicly, here, now. I’d be happy to do the story between Episode 3, that I finished in, and Episode 4 that Alec Guinness started in. I think that would be good. Disney should definitely do that.” McGregor’s tone suggested he was half-quipping.
We’ve known that McGregor would be down to return since the very day we learned there’d be new movies, but it’s nice to know that his interest hasn’t waned, at least.
McGregor was at the festival for the U.K. premiere of Last Days in the Desert, where he plays a duel role as Jesus and Satan. At least one upcoming role keeps him in the Disney family – he’s playing Lumiere in the live-action Beauty and the Beast that’s slated for 2017.
Making Star Wars has some info from the John Williams scoring sessions. There are some references to rumors/possible spoilers at the link, but according to what Jason has heard the music “is brilliant so far” and “Williams has topped himself.”
→ Mark Hamill did the narration at the cast read-through, Peter Mayhew said at Star Wars Weekends.
→ An interview with Adam Driver’s stunt double, Gyula Tóth has been floating around.
→ Spoiler corner: Back to MSW, this time for some rumors on the Resistance and a sequence leading up to a major battle.
Greg Grunberg may have more than a mere cameo in The Force Awakens. He told E! that he was in London for six weeks, and from his description it sounds like he was involved with the Greenham Common shoot.
→ Making Star Wars has a costume analysis of the main cast and a big dump of pretty iffy rumors.
→ A speeder similar to the one Rey rides in the trailer was found in the depths of The Old Republic.
→ The president of design at Apple had a conversation with J.J. Abrams about lightsabers that may have influenced the broadsaber.
→ In corporate moves, ILM president and general manager Lynwen Brennan has been promoted to general manager of Lucasfilm itself.
The Star Wars Bladebuilders line, launching this fall, lets kids create any ridiculous lightsaber they want with a variety of connectors, blades and other options.
When I heard that J.J. Abrams was at the VES awards last night, I wasn’t expecting much more than the standard boilerplate quotes. But he spoke to Collider on the red carpet, discussing the broadsaber (and the “many contradictory emails” he’s received about it,) IMAX, CGI, and more. Watch the video, or head over to Collider for the most pertinent quotes.
The basics, though: They’re still putting together the first cut of the film, he’ll be executive producing VIII and IX, there will still be “an enormous amount of CG effects,” (duh) and the broadsaber “was not done without a lot of conversation and it’s fun to see people have the conversation that we had, but in reverse.” None of these are huge revelations (we’ve known that only one scene is in IMAX for months,) but considering how little we’ve had out of Abrams overall, this is a bonanza.