Originally published April 17, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
It’s your annual post-Celebration edition of The Week in Star Wars, and we’ve got everything you need to catch up on…
…First off, congratulations to The Fate of the Furious for beating Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ opening weekend record…
…But let’s really start with the obvious thing to talk about: our first look at Star Wars: The Last Jedi [watch the trailer and see the poster here]. It didn’t get the same ‘wow’ reaction the first teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but it certainly had its fans. You can read the reaction of the Flickering Myth writing staff here and Tony Black’s thoughts here…
…You can also check out some fan parody posters here…
…We’ve also got a whole batch of new images from the movie [which you can see here], behind-the-scenes images [see those here] and interviews with the film’s cast including Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega [watch those here]…
…Director Rian Johnson also spoke about the film’s title, and confirmed that The Last Jedi is in fact singular – as hinted at in the opening crawl of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “It’s so funny, when people started asking that, when the title was announced because I had never even pondered that question,” he said. “That seems like, to me, the most—the most uninteresting [question]. … In my mind, it’s singular. In my mind it is [singular], absolutely.” Well that’s that settled…
…Someone who was missing from Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Billy Dee Williams’ Lando, and the actor has confirmed he won’t be in The Last Jedi either…
…We’ve got other interviews from the cast of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with Daisy Ridley talking about Rey’s relationship with Luke Skywalker here, John Boyega talking about Finn here, Rian Johnson talking about the new planet Criait here, and Mark Hamill talking about whether Luke will turn to the Dark Side here…
…Johnson also spoke about the opening crawl for the movie, saying, “Even if it picks up right where the last one left off, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions about what the state of everything is. We were able to fill three paragraphs…”
…But that’s not all from Johnson, who confirmed that we will find out that we will find out who Rey’s parents are in Star Wars: The Last Jedi saying, “It’s something that is absolutely going to be addressed… The other part of it is there are lots of surprises in this movie and lots of twists and turns, and I really want people to experience those when they see the movie for the first time. How we address that and how you feel about it and what happens with that is one of them.” We also heard that Take That star Gary Barlow will feature in the movie, but there was a report last year that Princes William and Harry will also cameo in the film. But is that true? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Johnson. “I have no clue. The last voice you heard … I can neither confirm nor deny.” Hmmm, very coy there Johnson…
…In the last of our interview quotes, Daisy Ridley said that people who have seen the first cuts of The Last Jedi have described it as “different”. Whatever that means. “I’ve spoken to a number of people that have seen a rough cut, and everyone’s like, ‘It’s different. It’s different.’ So I think with Rian’s vision and his image, and also I think he had J.J., who you know brought all the old fans back and the new fans in and he had all this stuff. Rian, I think, had more room to kind of do his thing…”
