The Force Awakens: After the trailer roundup

STILL-tfa-trailer3-xwing

If you want some analysis on the trailer as a marketing move, Devin Faraci at Birth Movies Death has it down: “What we’re seeing is a major blockbuster hitting the standard checkpoints of movie marketing with great reluctance.”

Meredith Woerner at the L.A. Times has pieced together stuff from the trailers with convention-season cast interviews and is, if nothing else, a good refresher for those who aren’t spending 99% of their time in “the bubble.”

→ In China, the trailer debuted on the Great Wall, because why not.

→ All The Force Awakens trailer numbers you may need.

→ AMC will be giving out a cool poster to folks who go see the film in IMAX 3D.

→ Relevant! There’s a new interview with Pablo Hidalgo (plus Dave Filoni, Shelly Shapiro, Chuck Wendig and Kieron Gillen) about Lucasfilm’s Story Group.

→ Spoilers! Someone let slip some interesting info on Pip Anderson’s character to the Making Star Wars folks last night.

→ There’s a music-only version of the trailer. On that note, Ali Arikan at Slate writes about the brand-new John Williams score.

Video: How Clone Wars and Rebels changed Star Wars

Pablo Hidalgo at Salt Lake Comic Con

Of the many great Star Wars panels at Salt Lake Comic Con a few weeks ago, one of the highlights was the “Clone Wars & Rebels: How Animation Changed Star Wars” panel. Moderated by Bryan Young, the panelists included Lucasfilm creative executive Pablo Hidalgo, veteran voice actor Dee Bradley Baker, and artist Scott Harben.


Bryan Young moderated another panel that would interest EU fans. He had authors R. A. Salvatore and Mike Stackpole discuss “Why We Killed Chewbacca” bringing in how the decision was made and the fallout from that event.

The Force Awakens: Vanity Fair catches up with Pablo (and John Williams)

pablo-hidalgo-lucasfilmRed alert! Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo is in Vanity Fair! We knew him when, y’all. Okay, they also have John Williams talking about The Force Awakens score, but: Pablo! He gives another fab quote on the Legends situation:

…there are great stories told there, but in all honesty they were written in an era where there was no expectation that we were going to add new movies or cinematic content onto that. So they blazed new trails there without the benefit of that knowledge, and they told really cool and compelling stories, but it’s not necessarily the stories that we want to tell on-screen.

→ Someone else got a super-vague quote from Oscar Isaac about Star Wars, this time the improbably named Monkeys Fighting Robots. (Says the woman who runs a site that sounds like it probably hosts porn.)

→ Do you want a (possible) synopsis of The Force Awakens based on all the Making Star Wars rumors? Do you? Because MSW has that for you. Click or not, it’s all you.