Category Archives: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Exclusive New Photo From The Last Jedi In Yahoo’s Fall Movie Preview
Via Yahoo.com:
‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ (Dec. 15)
Is it really time for the Jedi to end? That’s the main question going into Episode VIII as Rey meets a reluctant Luke; Kylo and Snoke plot revenge; Finn and Poe embark on new adventures … and we prepare to bid a teary farewell to Princess Leia.
One Way Star Wars: The Last Jedi Comes Up Short
Via Vanityfair.com:
There are a number of things we’ve come to expect from Star Wars movies. We know we’ll see droids, spaceships, lightsabers, desert planets, at least one person talking about the Force, and at least one other person saying, “I have a bad feeling about this.” But George Lucas also created a distinct style when he made his original Star Wars trilogy, turning things like opening crawls, soundtrack fanfares, and wipe transitions into the series’s own visual language.
Now, Lucas isn’t directing any of the films in the new trilogy, but the directors of each are all attempting to re-create Lucas’s visual style. Rian Johnson, who just directed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, opening this December, revealed this week that, to his chagrin, his film only features 12 of the Star Wars series’s characteristic wipe transitions. A wipe transition is a type of scene transition in which the opening shot of the next scene appears as if it’s unrolled on top of the closing shot of the previous one.
Johnson revealed the number of wipes his new film has after hosting a Twitter poll, in which he asked his followers to answer which Star Wars movie they thought had the highest number of wipes. As it turns out, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace has the most, with 55. The Empire Strikes Back has 42, A New Hope has 31, and The Force Awakens, which kicked off the new trilogy, only has 14.
A wipe transition has become something of an in-joke with Star Wars fans. Now that we’ve come to expect them in every movie, it’s more fun when there aren’t as many. Johnson no doubt knows how to make those 12 wipes count.
EW’s The Last Jedi Coverage Wrap Up
Via Ew.com:
As we close out EW’s cover story on The Last Jedi, let’s take a trip into the dark side of the galaxy.
Most of the previous stories have focused on the heroes of the Star Wars saga and the new film’s theme about the risks and rewards of meeting those you idolize.
Here’s a look at some of the villains, and a tease of what to expect from them when the film opens on Dec. 15.
KYLO REN
The aspiring Sith let his last bit of light slip away when he drove his janky, handmade lightsaber into the heart of his father, Han Solo. But there was no victory for Kylo Ren as he sank into the abyss.
Instead, he was humiliated. By a scavenger girl, of all things.
Click below to read the full article.
Rey And Her Family History
Via Ew.com:
Rey’s family has become the “Rosebud” of Star Wars: Who are they? What’s their significance? How will that revelation shape her destiny?
The mystery was introduced in The Force Awakens when Daisy Ridley’s desert scavenger touched the ancestral Skywalker lightsaber and saw a series of visions, including a starship abandoning a much younger version of herself on the junkyard world of Jakku.
Now, The Last Jedi will finally resolve the question that fans have been debating for two years.
This article, obviously, won’t spoil anything. The theory I’m holding onto is still this one.
Click below to read the full article.
Details on Benicio Del Toro’s Devious Character
Via Ew.com:
It’s hard to know where Benicio Del Toro’s new character stands in The Last Jedi — even when he tells us.
Before the movie began shooting, the actor hinted in a radio interview that he was playing “a villain” in the film, but in subsequent conversations, like this sit-down with Entertainment Tonight, he said, “I don’t know if he’s a villain. People are saying that, but it’s like they read a different script than I read.”
Seems like the Oscar-winner is an unreliable narrator here, but maybe he’s just staying true to his character.
All we know for sure is that Del Toro plays a man who goes by the name “DJ.” And his shabby appearance suggests someone familiar with the underbelly of the galaxy.
As part of EW’s cover story about The Last Jedi, Lucasfilm has revealed a little more.
Here’s the official one-liner on him: “DJ is an enigmatic figure whose tattered, threadbare clothes and lackadaisical attitude conceal a sharp mind and expert skills.”
Click below to read the full article.
Rian Johnson Talks About Comparisons To Empire Strikes Back
Via Cinemablend.com:
For better or worse, Star Wars: The Force Awakens received a lot of comparisons to the original Star Wars: A New Hope when it was released in 2015, so it’s no surprise that people are expecting Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be this trilogy’s Empire Strikes Back. Even with what little we know about the new film’s plot, there are obvious parallels. Rey will spend a good portion of the story training with Luke Skywalker, just as Luke did with Yoda, all while the Resistance has to deal with the First Order. Director Rian Johnson says that while there certainly are some similarities, he tries to ignore them because the story is, ultimately, something new. According to Johnson…
“I just tried to kind of ignore that aspect of it and have the story take the shape that it needed to, but look, Rey is off in a remote location with a Jedi master, and the Resistance is in a tough spot, and we’re intercutting those stories. By its very nature, there are some structural parallels. But these are new characters, they’re dealing with new things, and that ultimately is what defines the movie. So I think that’s going to be unique.”
Click below to read the full article.
Carrie Fisher In Her Final Role
Via Ew.com:
Live fearlessly, live boldly, and even after you’re gone that strength and inspiration burn on.
After Carrie Fisher’s unexpected death in December, The Last Jedi will mark her final performance as Leia Organa — the Star Wars character who went from orphan to princess, to spy, to senator, and finally general of the Resistance.
She remains a light that will never go out in the galaxy.
“Her character to some degree or another has been defined by loss through this whole saga, starting with the loss of her home planet. She’s just taken hit after hit, and she’s borne it, and she focuses on moving forward and the task at hand,” says writer-director Rian Johnson.
No matter what grief or trauma Leia faced, she never wavered in her commitment to fighting for freedom in the galaxy, and her battle continues in The Last Jedi. Leia remains in charge of the scattershot Resistance movement, cut off from the Republic, whose leadership and capitol was annihilated in The Force Awakens.
Anyone who expected the Resistance to fill that void and maintain order would be mistaken. “No, no, no. Not at all,” Johnson says. “They’re a small band that’s now cut off, on its own, and hunted when the Republic is shattered. When the First Order did that hit, the Resistance is isolated, and they’re very, very vulnerable. That’s where we pick them up.”
Click below to read the full article.
Elite Praetorian Guard
Via Ew.com:
Villains always have heroes of their own. But they’re not necessarily anyone you’d ever want to meet.
That’s not the case with Star Wars.
In The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren will venture to the side of one of his malevolent icons, and fans will finally get their wish to see the enigmatic tyrant in the flesh.
Supreme Leader Snoke only appeared in The Force Awakens via hologram, but in the new film out Dec. 15, the towering character (performed via motion-capture by Andy Serkis) will finally emerge from hiding.
These will be his protectors – the Praetorian Guard, a variation on the crimson-cloaked Imperial guards who flanked the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.
“The Emperor’s guards were very formal, and you always got the sense that they could fight, but they didn’t,” writer-director Rian Johnson tells EW. “They looked like they were more ceremonial, and you never really saw them in action. The Praetorians, my brief to [costume designer] Michael Kaplan was that those guys have to be more like samurai. They have to be built to move, and you have to believe that they could step forward and engage if they have to. They have to seem dangerous.”
The Praetorians get their name from our own true-life history and the elite special guard who protected ancient Roman emperors. “If we can get kids’ ears to perk up in history class a little bit when they hear that, that’d be a cool thing,” Johnson says.
Click below to read the full article.
Meet The Porgs and ‘The Caretakers’ From Luke Skywalker’s Island
Via Ew.com:
Who doesn’t like porgs? They’re all cute, and fluffy, and ingratiating…
But they get everywhere.
Below, in a new image from The Last Jedi, we see Chewbacca at the helm of the Millennium Falcon with one such interloper.
These penguin-like wide-eyed creatures are native to the planet of Ahch-To, site of the first Jedi temple, and they’re just one type of new creature the Dec. 15 film introduces to the Star Wars menagerie.
The porgs are so ubiquitous, they even leaked out ahead of time, sneaking past Lucasfilm security to bounce around the internet. In real life, they were puppets created through Neal Scanlan’s creature shop, with wide black eyes and furry, flapping wings.
Writer-director Rian Johnson said that although Luke Skywalker retreated to Ahch-To, he didn’t want the Jedi to be alone. Inspiration for the porgs came during a visit to the Irish island of Skellig Michael, where the final scenes of The Force Awakens were shot.
“If you go to Skellig at the right time of year, it’s just covered in puffins, and they’re the most adorable things in the world,” Johnson tells EW. “So when I was first scouting there, I saw these guys, and I was like, oh, these are part of the island. And so the Porgs are in that realm.”
But there is another alien life-form inhabiting the primeval Jedi temple.
Click below to read the full article.
