With, yes, a few more new seconds of the film.
UPDATE: The official high res version has now been uploaded to the official Youtube.
Roundup: The Force Awakens’ running time and everything else we learned from EW’s big feature
My issue of Entertainment Weekly finally arrived, and I’m happy to report that we’ve already learned pretty much everything that’s in it regarding The Force Awakens from them online, save one: The final edit is locked, and it’s going to be two hours and 15 minutes long.
If you need to catch up, here’s our coverage of what EW’s put out this week:
→ Most everything from the main article gotten broken out, but Anthony Breznican’s interviews with Harrison Ford about Han and with Daisy Ridley and John Boyega get their own spreads in the magazine.
→ Don’t call her Princess: Leia Organa has a new title. And of course, there’s the inevitable talk of Luke Skywalker and why he’s been laying low in the publicity materials.
→ Perhaps the greatest wealth of The Force Awakens info can be found in the photo gallery. More on Rey’s speeder, jackets, Adam Driver’s lustrous hair, ladies in armor, First Order indoctrination, Bobbajo and more.
→ We learn the most about Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz Kanata since the character’s name was revealed way back in the spring.
→ Starkiller Base and General Hux get the spotlight – and it’s confirmed that Starkiller is indeed what we saw on the poster.
→ The big BB-8 gender question.
→ And, too late for press time I suspect, an interview with Anthony Daniels.
EW may be short on Kylo Ren, but remember he was the focus of EW’s last TFA cover story back in August… And we still have just over a month to go until the movie.
BB-8’s gender is still up for debate
Both Artoo and Threepio have been ‘he’ from the start, but it seems the jury may still be out on the new addition. Is BB-8 a girl droid or a boy droid?
During the design phase, it was up for debate whether this character would have a male or female personality. “I’m still not sure, dare I say, whether BB-8 is male or female,” [Neal Scanlan, the head of The Force Awakens creature shop] says. “BB-8 was female in our eyes. And then he or she became male. And that’s all part of the evolution, not only visually, but in the way they move, how they hold themselves.”
So far, pretty much everyone involved with the film, from Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams on down, has been calling BB-8 a he. Yes, it may be silly that this is even an issue, but that’s fandom for you.
As for the droid’s actual personality:
“We always imagined BB-8 as being quite manipulative,” says Scanlan. “I think he knows he’s cute. He knows that he can win people over. And he uses that like children do to get his own way. In this film, he has a very important mission that he has to accomplish and so he uses his personality, his coyness, and all of those things.”
Maybe the ‘BB-8 is evil’ camp has been onto something all along?
Boyega and Ridley on diversity, the Millennium Falcon, and lightsabers in The Force Awakens
I’m not sure if we’re coming up on the last of the Entertainment Weekly stuff or not (my issue did not arrive in a timely fashion, as per usual, and the app is awful) but this afternoon brought interviews with Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. Addressed is some of the backlash:
“We see through the eyes of children that they’re not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They’re not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone’s skin. That should teach us something,” Boyega says.
The bigots trying to sully things? He has no time for them. “We’ve been having a continuous struggle with idiots, and now we should just force them to understand – and I love the way I just used Force there, by the way – just force people to see this is the new world,” he says. “There are loads of people of different shades and backgrounds. Get used to it.”
Ridley talks about Harrison Ford and the Millennium Falcon:
She even got some sage starship-flying advice from Harrison Ford. “I was doing random switch-flipping and Harrison kind of put his hand out and said, no, everything had to have a purpose. Like, you flip a switch and then you see what it does, before you do anything else,” she says. “I was probably flipping switches too quickly!”
There was one other awkward moment. “Um, probably when I sat in his pilot seat,” Ridley says. “There’s a shot where I pilot the Falcon by myself. And then [on another day] Harrison and I went to film together. I went to get into the pilot seat and he was like, ‘That’s mine,’ and I was genuinely mortified. And J.J. was sitting there like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ And, you know, I moved into the co-pilot seat.”
And Boyega on lightsabers:
“It started in rehearsals. We had [Kylo Ren actor] Adam Driver. That was the first time ever I had a stick in my hand that I could pretend was a lightsaber, which was the first stage of excitement,” he says. “I had to do all the sound effects and stuff by myself.”
In front of the cameras, he was given a much more elaborate prop. “That’s when I got the real saber, which is blue, it’s lighted, and just looks really epic,” Boyega says. “It felt monumental in my hand. I knew not to play like I used to when I was a kid, but to actually use it in serious combat for a scene. It’s absolutely crazy to have in your hand. It’s a bit heavy but it’s worth it. “
I believe that’s confirmation of something Making Star Wars posted last month, about how custom versions of Force FX lightsabers were used on set to help with lighting and other effects.
Video: More The Force Awakens from the Disney Channel
The Disney Channel aired this spot tonight with a handful of new scenes from The Force Awakens, including new footage of General Hux, Poe Dameron and on Jakku.
Abrams, Gleeson on Starkiller Base and General Hux
In today’s first Entertainment Weekly feature, J.J. Abrams and Domhnall Gleeson discussing the First Order’s Starkiller Base and General Hux – and EW’s first spoiler warning.
Above that, however, Abrams describes Starkiller:
“It is very much — and it’s acknowledged as such in the movie — apparently another Death Star,” Abrams says. “But what it’s capable of, how it works, and what the threat is, is far greater than what the Death Star could have done. Starkiller Base is another step forward, technologically speaking, in terms of power.”
As for Hux, Gleeson reiterates that the character is ruthless
“You don’t get that high up in your life that quickly unless you’re pretty ruthless,” says Gleeson, who’s 32. “You have to put a few people down on the way to get there.” The actor also says Hux doesn’t carry a signature weapon: he has other people to do such dirty work.
What’s the appeal of the First Order to Hux? “It’s in the title: order,” Gleeson says. “It’s a desire to lump everything in its place and just have power. The desire for power is hugely motivating for a lot of people and normally the people who want all the power are not the ones who should have it.”
On his relationship with Kylo Ren, EW goes for “frenemies:”
“He’s kind of opposite Kylo Ren,” Gleeson says. “They have their own relationship, which is individual and unusual. One of them is strong in different ways than the other. They’re both vying for power.”
The ‘spoilery’ stuff is mainly speculation, but it’s not hard to connect the dots.
Video: New The Force Awakens footage from #TGITAwakens
A new TV spot debuted on ABC Thursday night, with a few glimpses of new footage, including more on Jakku, the Resistance command room, Finn and the lightsaber, and, above, Rey and Han. Here’s the official Youtube:
A few stills – and thoughts – below the cut, in a gallery. Continue reading “Video: New The Force Awakens footage from #TGITAwakens”
Entertainment Weekly is not going to spoil you about Luke Skywalker
Entertainment Weekly isn’t going to tell you where Luke is in The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams isn’t going to, either. And certainly not Mark Hamill.
Because Luke Skywalker missing is the whole point. A more interesting question may be, what does the rest of the galaxy know?
“It was the thing that struck me the hardest, which was the idea that doing a story that took place nearly 40 years after Jedi meant that there would be a generation for whom Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia would be as good as myth,” Abrams says. “They’d be as old and as mythic as the tale of King Arthur. They would be characters who they may have heard of, but maybe not. They’d be characters who they might believe existed, or just sounded like a fairy tale.”
Abrams does talk at length about how Rey and Finn would perceive Luke or the Jedi, however. For Rey, there’s only the scattershot stories she may have heard. For Finn, “raised from the ashes of the Empire,” Luke is a propaganda villain. (Han Solo? A footnote.)
As for the blue lightsaber, it’s “an important piece of the puzzle that will reveal Luke’s fate and whereabouts.”
And yes, there’s more quotes from Abrams and Hamill, but they’re not going to give you the full story. Not yet.
The Force Awakens IMAX poster debuts
Debuting today, The Force Awakens IMAX 3D poster.
J.J. Abrams confirms orange alien is Maz Kanata, reveals some of her story
Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz Kanata is indeed the orange alien we see on the poster, J.J. Abrams confirms to Entertainment Weeky, and the googles are an important part of her character:
Her eyes have special meaning and power. “I had some specific ideas about how she would work and what she would do,” Abrams says. “I had this pitch about these goggles that she wore. Her eyes are an important aspect of her character, and you’ll see how it plays out.”
He also says she was a pirate for a very long time, and “she’s lived over a thousand years. She’s had this watering hole for about a century, and it’s like another bar that you’d find in a corner of the Star Wars universe.”