Entertainment Weekly has turned this ordinary Wednesday into a great one for “Star Wars” fans, as they have just released tons of great new images and details about “The Force Awakens” for their latest issue!
Here are all the new images that Entertainment Weekly has released from the film:
They also posted two new articles regarding “The Force Awakens” that reveal some new story details about the film, which you can check out some of the highlights from them below, but if you want to go into the entire movie fresh without knowing anything, then they should be considered spoilers:
Spoilers Below:
Article One: How Luke Skywalker lured J.J. Abrams into directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Kennedy persuaded J.J. Abrams to helm Star Wars: The Force Awakens by asking a simple question, one with the potential to upend our core beliefs about the galaxy far, far away. “In the context of talking about story and laying out what we were thinking, I said one thing to him,” Kennedy recalls. “‘Who is Luke Skywalker?’”
Abrams decided he needed to know the answer, even if he had to devise it himself.“He said, ‘Oh my God, I just got the chills. I’m in,’” Kennedy says. “I mean, it really was almost that quickly.”
“Any good story has conflict,” Abrams says. “And if all were rosy 30-some years post-Jedi, we would be hard-pressed to find an interesting story to tell.” He’s not ready to reveal the political layout of the galaxy in The Force Awakens just yet, but what we know so far: There is no peace in the heavens.
The Empire has morphed into a junta known as The First Order, while X-Wing pilots like Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron now fly for a splinter group known as the Resistance. Princess Leia (Fisher) has come into possession of the lightsaber once possessed by her father, Darth Vader, and later lost by Luke (Hamill) when Vader separated him from his arm during that “join me” duel in The Empire Strikes Back.
The amount of screentime the Skywalker twins may get is still unclear, although Luke’s fate is obviously a key factor. Ford’s Han Solo, however, will be one of the leads, piloting the Millennium Falcon alongside his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew.) Among the newcomers, desert scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and runaway stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) will be running for their lives, with the rolling droid BB-8 trying to keep up. Eventually all five of them end up aboard that familiar starship.
“The themes and ideas that we all continue to talk about are the themes and ideas that were the inherent in the original movies,” Kennedy says. “We’re looking, obviously, for aspiration, for characters who are conflicted between good and evil, dark and light.”
Even though he is not involved with the story or the making of the movie, here’s where Kennedy says George Lucas’ influence is still vital: “George spoke often about that tension in everybody between what’s good and bad. He always felt that it was easier to be bad than good,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not sure all people would agree, but I think that that’s always an interesting conflict to explore. So that’s a big part of the themes inside of Episode VII.”
Was there anything from the original films they struggled to echo in The Force Awakens? “I think we can’t explore in quite as much detail issues of compassion, the way [Lucas] did in terms of the values of the Jedi,” Kennedy says. “But we’re going to get there, let’s put it that way. In the arc of all three movies, that will increase.”
Kasdan says he didn’t join on to the prequels in the late ‘90s because he was no longer intrigued by the galaxy. “When George asked me to work on the other movies, I didn’t,” he says. “That wasn’t where I was at.” But a decade and a half later, Kasdan found himself in Abrams’ shoes — unable to resist finding out what happened to the original characters. Intrigued, once again, by similar questions, like: Who is Luke Skywalker?
“I thought, ‘Wow, okay, these people have lived — they’re in a different place in their lives, Han and Leia and so on. They’ve lived the same 30 years I have. What would that be like? How would you see things differently?’” Kasdan says. “And I was trying to figure out how I saw things differently, and one of the surprises is that you don’t learn all that much. You haven’t become much wiser than you were, and things are not clearer to you, and the world is just as confusing as it always was — and that’s a kind of lovely thing to get to write about again. Age does not necessarily bring wisdom; it just brings experience.”
J.J. Abrams will not direct Episode IX saying, “No, I’m not going to direct Episode IX, as much as I am deeply envious of anyone who gets to work with this group of people on the future movies,” he says.
The story arcs he and Kasdan mapped out will be picked up by Johnson, so Abrams will find himself becoming sort of like ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi in Empire and Jedi — a presence, an influence, but not part of the action. He likes that. “It’s a thrill to see [Johnson] take things and elevate them beyond what we had imagined at the time,” Abrams says.
Kennedy says the trilogy story has been approximated, but is ever-evolving. “We know where we’re going, but only in the broadest sense,” she says. “When Rian came in and started writing his script, he started from scratch, other than knowing what we had done in Episode VII and projecting out where it was going. He then sat down and put pen to paper, and it’s 100 percent him.”
And here is the second article that reveals a lot of new info about Kylo Ren:
Article Two: Kylo Ren’s shroud is pulled back at last, but… He’s not who we’ve been told.
We came to learn that he was allied with The First Order, a remnant of the Empire that remains a fearsome threat to the galaxy and its denizens.
He seems to be a Vader obsessive, with an appearance influenced by that dark lord of the Sith who met his demise long before Ren’s birth. “The movie explains the origins of the mask and where it’s from, but the design was meant to be a nod to the Vader mask,” Abrams tells EW. “[Ren] is well aware of what’s come before, and that’s very much a part of the story of the film.”
“The lightsaber is something that he built himself, and is as dangerous and as fierce and as ragged as the character,” Abrams says.
“As you see in the best of storytelling, and no doubt the best of Star Wars, these are tales in which an everyperson has to step up. And I think that what makes Ren so unique is that he isn’t as fully formed as when we meet a character such as Darth Vader,” Abrams says. “And I think that there are two sides to the Force. Both sides, arguably, would see themselves as the hero of their story, and I think that applies here.”
Kylo Ren isn’t the character’s real name. “He is a character who came to the name Kylo Ren when he joined a group called the Knights of Ren,” Abrams says. But that’s as far as the writer-director will go. What are the Knights of Ren? You’re going to have to wait until Dec. 18 to find out.
“He is not your prototypical mustache-twirling bad guy,” Abrams offers. “He is a little bit more complex than that, and it was a great joy to work with Adam Driver on this role, because he threw himself into it in a deep and remarkable way.”
“I’ve written four Star Wars movies now, and there’s never been a character quite like the one that Adam plays. I think you’re going to see something that’s brand new to the saga” says Lawrence Kasdan.
What sets him apart? “He’s full of emotion,” Kasdan says. “No matter how we express ourselves in the world, whether we hide it and act very calm or whether we’re very out there and demonstrative, everybody’s roiling with emotion. And you want your characters to be that way, too. Then they have to deal with their emotions as best they can, with what they are.”
Lots of awesome stuff to chew on in all those new images and those two articles. But one thing is for sure, with every new information that get’s revealed about “The Force Awakens,” the movie just sounds better and better, and it gets me even more excited for it!
Stay tuned for more info, as there is supposed to be some more articles going up today over at Entertainment Weekly
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