Your weekend edition of The Week in Star Wars features more footage from various TV spots for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, updates on the new trilogy, Star Wars Battlefront II reviewed and more…
Let’s kick things off with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and it was reported this week that the movie – unsurprisingly – is heading for a big domestic opening. The latest tracking suggests the hotly-anticipated December adventure should bring home around $200 million on its opening weekend, which is around $7 million less than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Should it achieve this, it will be the fourth largest domestic opening in history…
…If you were hoping to see the lovable Lando Calrissian in The Last Jedi, then director Rian Johnson is here to dash your dreams. “I don’t want fans to get their hopes up,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s not in the film, and it was never really something that came up. I mean, I loved that character. It would have been fun to see him, but it’s just not something that ever really had a place in the story…”
…Someone who will feature in the movie, however, is Supreme Leader Snoke, and Andy Serkis has been talking with Entertainment Weekly about the character’s motivations in The Last Jedi. “The thing about Snoke is that he is extremely strong with the Force, the dark side of the Force. He’s terribly powerful, of course. But he is also a very vulnerable and wounded character,” said Serkis. “He has suffered and he has suffered injury. The way that his malevolence comes out is in reaction to that. His hatred of the Resistance is fueled by what’s happened to him personally…”
…Another interview from Entertainment Weekly now, and John Boyega has spoken about Finn’s relationship with those loveable merchandise sellers, The Porgs. “They are interesting, but for me, I had a love/hate relationship with them,” he said. “They’re very, very cute, but when you put them in a bunch, in holes, on the Millennium Falcon, that’s when they start to become really, really freaky. They’ve got real big eyes, all bunched together. There were, like, little tiny ones and little big ones that would just…yeah, it looks like a rash…”
…And in the final bit of Entertainment Weekly coverage, Mark Hamill has spoken about his emotional return to the Millennium Falcon on the set of The Last Jedi. “I’m telling you, I didn’t expect to have the reaction I had,” he said. “I was there with my family, with [my children] Nathan and Griffin and Chelsea and my wife Marilou, and [Lucasfilm] asked if the documentary crew could be there when I came back on the Millennium Falcon. I mean, this was not on the shooting day. I was just street clothes and going to visit that set. And I said, ‘Sure.’ It was sort of like visiting an old house that you lived in when you were a kid. I mean, I just welled up with emotion and I said, ‘I need to be by myself.’ They had recreated it down to every last detail that I remember. The oil drips, the hanging pipes, just everything. The dice in the cockpit. All of this, happening to me again was… it’s hard to put into words. I figured when the prequels came out, plus a few years, people would forget about us. But it never really went away…”
…Lastly on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and a batch of new images were released, and new TV spots which you can check out here, here and here…
…The biggest story from the Star Wars universe this year was the shock firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo: A Star Wars Story to be replaced with Ron Howard. We’ve not heard from the directors since, but at the Vulture Film Festival this week the pair spoke about their experiences. “We had the most incredible cast and crew and collaborators,” Lord said. “I think in terms of us leaving the project, I think everybody went in with really good intentions and our approach to making the movie was different than theirs. That was a really big gap to bridge, and it proved to be too big. Sometimes people break up, and it’s really sad, and it’s really disappointing, but it happens and we learned a lot from our collaborators and we’re better filmmakers for it. We’re really proud of the work we did on the movie and we wish everybody the best.” You can read Chris Miller’s comments here…
…A director who clearly has a lot of clout in the Lucasfilm offices is Rian Johnson who has been given the keys to a whole new Star Wars trilogy. Additionally to his previous comments about The Last Jedi in the Entertainment Weekly piece, Johnson spoke about this new stage in the Star Wars Saga. “I’m just in the very beginning of starting to come up with what the new trilogy is going to be,” he said. “But I can tell you this, what makes me so excited about it, is the idea of doing a new story on the big canvas of three movies in this world. There’s just so much potential and I can’t wait to jump into it…”
…A batch of promotional images have arrived online for several of the upcoming LEGO Star Wars 2018 sets which includes a few new Microfighters, two battle packs, General Grievous’ Combat Speeder, Ahch-To Island Training and Defense of Crait sets from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Boba Fett and Darth Vader buildable figures. Check those out here…
…Next year sees Timothy Zahn return to the character of General Thrawn and Del Rey Books revealed the cover for the anticipated Star Wars: Thrawn – Alliances, which you can check out here…
…Hot Toys has released a batch of promotional images for its 1/6th scale Darth Vader collectible figure which is based of the appearnace of the Sith Lord in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Check that out here…
…The controversial Star Wars Battlefront II is out now (and the first bit of DLC was announced this week), and our own Shaun Munro reviewed it for PlayStation 4. Sadly, he was not a fan. Read his review here.
That’s all for this week – may the Force be with you.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth, a presenter for WrestleTalk, and the author of Lights, Camera, GAME OVER!: How Video Game Movies Get Made. You can follow him on Twitter @ThisisLukeOwen.
