Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
The Official Site has a great interview with Annie Leibovitz about her Vanity Fair photo spread.
Included in that interview is a previously unseen photo of Andy Serkis rigged in mo-cap gear, and they also dropped his character name: Supreme Leader Snoke (of the First Order?).
Leibovitz also had some nice words about Adam Driver, who plays masked villain Kylo Ren.
As part of the June cover story, Vanity Fair sat down with director J.J. Abrams to talk about his work on The Force Awakens. Topics of conversation include how he and the rest of the creative team went about setting the tone and referencing the other films, and what it was like working on Star Wars as a lifelong fan.
On the podcast we’ve speculated a lot about the state of the GFFA 30 years after Endor, and Abrams discusses the appeal of dropping in the audience into the middle of the action with little explanation.
What was incredible about Star Wars, among other things, was that in that first movie Vader could’ve been his father, but he wasn’t, you know. Leia could’ve been his sister, but she wasn’t. You didn’t really know what the Empire was up to exactly. You didn’t really understand what it meant that there was a Senate or the Dark Times or any of the references, and yet you felt the presence of all these things and you understood because it was all being referenced in a way that allowed you to fill in the blanks, and that’s a very powerful thing.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but lately I feel very comforted reading and listening to interviews with Abrams. There’s no doubt he understands the importance of Star Wars, and knows that getting the feel right is just as important as the story itself. Combine that with the amazing new teaser and set pictures, and I absolutely cannot wait until December 18.
Right after midnight, Vanity Fair posted their cover article for the June The Force Awakens issue, complete with a video and picture of Kylo Ren sans mask.
More photos were revealed this morning, including one of Poe Dameron looking super dashing next to his X-wing.
Also revealed was that Lupita Nyongo’s CGI character, Maz Kanata, is a pirate. A PIRATE!
Vanity Fair will be revealing one final photo tomorrow via their newsletter.
Update 12:05PM – Gwendoline Christie IS Captain Phasma/the chrometrooper
Mirroring their work leading up to the releases of the Prequel Trilogy films, Vanity Fair is getting set to unleash exclusive content about The Force Awakens this week.
Tomorrow, they’ll be releasing photos from Annie Leibovitz on their website. Those same photos will be hitting newstands shortly after.
If the past is any indication, we may be getting set to see set photos for the first time. Could character reveals even be in store? We’ll have to check back with Vanity Fair this week to find out.
Photo from the OC Register
This post contains officially released information about The Force Awakens. If you want no spoilers whatsover, click away now.
This past weekend at Celebration Anaheim, J.J. Abrams opened his mystery box ever so slightly and gave us a literal teaser of what we have to look forward to in The Force Awakens. Other than a few Force for Change videos, an 88-second teaser released in November, and eight trading cards, there’s been little officially announced information about the probable most anticipated movie of all time. Leading up to Celebration, everyone was speculating about what — if anything — Abrams would reveal and whether or not it would live up to the hype.
He didn’t reveal a lot.
But it was enough.
And it completely exceeded my expectations.
Kathleen Kennedy is my master now.
Before Celebration Anaheim, it was cool to be a fangirl. Last Thursday morning, Kathleen Kennedy made it respectable.
I was already super excited for The Force Awakens panel, which opened Celebration Anaheim in the most explosive manner possible. But I didn’t realize how excited I was about the future of the franchise until I saw Kennedy walk onstage in a Star Wars t-shirt. And not just any shirt, but the new Her Universe lightsaber shirt that debuted at Celebration, which she purchased with her own money because she wanted something to wear for the panel. She rocked it with a white blazer, and you’re stupid if you don’t think millions of women are going to copy that look.
This is a huge deal. Kennedy has been a fixture in Hollywood for decades, and George Lucas entrusted her ahead of lots and lots of qualified individuals to take over the reigns of Star Wars. One of her first actions as head of Lucasfilm was to decide that the franchise would move forward as one story while respecting its vast history. She’s a hugely respected producer and brings a ton of credibility as Lucas’s successor. I’m more confident than ever in her ability to help tell great stories and be a steward for this varied, diverse, wonderful fandom.
The most important thing isn’t that Kennedy herself is a woman, but rather the fact that she accepts this fandom is so diverse. She understands it, and embraces it. She insisted on purchasing a Her Universe shirt with her own money just so she could support the business. During The Force Awakens panel she specifically mentioned the lack of female representation in the franchise’s history, and assured everyone there would be lots more women characters going forward. I can’t overemphasize how important it is to have the panel host, director J.J. Abrams, and Kennedy discuss the negative reaction to the first cast photo and say they’ve heard those arguments and agree with them. And Kennedy isn’t someone merely looking to take advantage of an untapped demographic, or bow down to “the feminists”. She’s part of that demographic, and wants to rectify the lazy, incorrect assumption that women and girls don’t like Star Wars. (If you believe that, you obviously weren’t in attendance at Celebration Anaheim, because women and girls were everywhere.) As far as Kennedy is concerned, everyone likes Star Wars, and she wants to make sure they feel welcomed and represented in fandom and the franchise.
I’ve never felt more comfortable with the future of Star Wars than after that panel. You could feel the excitement in the air just watching from the overflow room, not to mention the unadulterated happiness at seeing BB-8, the new cast, the old cast, the new stormtroopers, and finally, the teaser trailer. The crowd was so enthusiastic they had to show the teaser twice. I laughed, I cried, I got goosebumps, I clutched hands with my neighbors, I kissed my husband. And in the back of my mind I was thinking thank you, Kathleen Kennedy. Thank you for understanding that Star Wars is for everyone. Thank you for making us so happy with the greatest teaser trailer I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Thank you for agreeing to be a part of the Star Wars family. Thank you for making it accepted and respected to be a fangirl. Thank you for being someone I can look up to.
Thank you for helping make Celebration Anaheim the best one yet.
Chewie, we’re home.
Certainly this won’t generate any sort of controversy. In an interview with Cinemablend to promote Strange Magic, Nick Rimando asked the Maker himself what details he could reveal about The Force Awakens. The answer, unsurprisingly, was nothing. As for why Lucas couldn’t say anything, well:
The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens].
There’s no doubt those two sentences are going to cause all sorts of reactions, all of which will follow the usual post-Disney sale outrage scripts from all sides. It’s important to keep in mind that story treatments often get tossed aside or are heavily modified by the time the final scripts are being put in front of cameras.
The reasoning for Disney going their own path is likely simple. It’s better to start fresh with a new braintrust in place from the beginning than to try and not fumble a handoff of someone else’s plan meant to stretch nearly a decade of development.
While none of the actors are able to tell us much about The Force Awakens yet, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly Andy Serkis shared a few things that he can tell us about the movie and his work on it. His answers to EW’s questions, unsurprisingly, don’t give us a lot of detail about the story or characters, but he does reveal that he plays only one character in the film and that his voice in the teaser is unaltered.
One question that he’s not able to give an answer to is whether or not his character is performance capture, which is unsurprising, given the amount of information one could likely draw from the answer.
It was one of the first casting rumors out there, but it turns out it may be true. Oxford educated actress Maisie Richardson-Sellers tells Refinery29 that she has a role in The Force Awakens. What role is she playing? Well, don’t expect her to reveal that anytime soon.
I had to sign many, many contracts. It’s very, very secret. But, everyone who’s working on it loves and respects the franchise so much, they all want to keep it a secret. We wanted to hold it tight, so it wasn’t hard for anyone. It wasn’t a forced thing; it’s our little child which we’re going to present to the world in a year.
Another woman, and another woman of color. The Galaxy Far, Far Away is getting a bit more diverse, and that’s awesome.
J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy have given us all an early Christmas present via Entertainment Weekly: several of Star Wars: The Force Awakens character names!
Revealed via eight retro-style trading cards, the character names are as follows (cut for spoilers): Continue reading