Your weekend edition of The Week in Star Wars returns with the latest from Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi home entertainment details and box office, more from Rian Johnson’s new trilogy, Liam Neeson on a potential return and more…
Let’s kick things off this week with Solo: A Star Wars Story, and despite the film being out in just a few months we’ve yet to see any official marketing from the film. Word of a potential trailer should be coming soon (we’re at Disney’s 2018 slate this coming Monday where we’re expecting to see one), but Lucasfilm did release an official synopsis for the movie. The synopsis reads, “Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far away in Solo: A Star Wars Story, an all-new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.” So, not a whole lot there is there?..
…Fans in Germany, however, have seen some footage from the film. There’s no word on what was shown, but filmmaker Holger Frick posted to Facebook about the footage with a lot of praise saying, “I just saw a Sneak Peak (EPK reel) of Solo – A Star Wars Story and I must say I’m really really overwhelmed of how freaggin good it looks!” He added: “Alden Ehrenreich is amazing as Han Solo, and so is Donald Glover as Lando, Emilia Clarke and Woody Harrelson look awesome and it definitely had an ‘old’ Star Wars feel to it!.. Looks like this could be the ‘fan-service-movie’ some of the older Star Wars fans wanted from Episode VIII.” It might just be this writer, but a ‘fan-service’ movie fills me with dread…
…But these low expectations are what Samuel Brace argues could lead the movie to success (read his article here). He’s got a good point, just look at last year’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle…
…One of the film’s star Phoebe Waller-Bridge spoke with IGN about the changing of directors saying, “The handover there was done with such warmth and generosity from everybody, and Ron’s just a master at his craft; he’s going to make a beautiful film out of it. You just really trust him and it was just really exciting to work with him. I mean, it would’ve been exciting to just pass him in a corridor, let alone for him to be parachuted in to the film you’re working on. We’d done some really, really great stuff with Chris and Phil that everyone was really thrilled with, and I think a lot of that will still be in it…”
…Moving over to Star Wars: The Last Jedi now (which helped push the franchise past $9 billion at the box office), and we got details this week about the home entertainment release. According to the official Star Wars Facebook page, we’re going to get a whopping two hours of bonus footage, deleted scenes and other special feature content. And that’s not all, as it will also be the first Star Wars movie to receive a 4K Ultra HD release…
…Although the film has had a great box office run, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was pulled suddenly from Chinese theatres after a very poor release. The film grossed $28.7 million in its opening weekend in China, but earned a far lower $2.4 million during its second week. Compared to other Star Wars films that have released in Mainland China, this is considerably low. It should come as no surprise as Star Wars: The Force Awakens showed that Star Wars interest in China is much lower than it is elsewhere in the world, and any Western film that isn’t part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or The Fast and Furious have all struggled…
…In other news, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was calculated as the most diverse movie ever made…
…Someone who has passionately defended the movie is frequent Rian Johnson collaborator Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who features in Star Wars: The Last Jedi in a minuscule voice role as the Canto Bight character Slowen-Lo). In a lengthy Facebook post, Gordon-Levitt targeted the movie’s detractors who weren’t keen on the portrayal of Luke Skywalker saying, “No one is a perfect hero or a perfect villain, we’re more complicated than that, every one of us. Flawless characters feel thin. And forgive me if I blaspheme, but the young Luke Skywalker always did feel just a little light to me, which is why it was so cool this time around to see him fill out into a more imperfect human being.” Read more of his post here…
…Rian Johnson has spoken with several news outlets this week about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. First during a Q&A with BAFTA he spoke about not explaining Snoke’s backstory [read that here]. In Empire’s movie podcast, Johnson spoke about about letting the past die [read that here], Rey’s parents [read that here] and missing The Knights of Ren in the movie [read that here]. And he took apart the complaint about Luke’s Force Projection is a series of tweets which you can check out here…
…Johnson also spoke about a potential return for Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode IX which you can read here…
…Speaking of Star Wars: Episode IX, and superfan Kevin Smith has given a theory for the movie where J.J. Abrams will destroy the Millennium Falcon to really break fans’ hearts…
…Lastly from Rian Johnson, and he has teased a new direction for his trilogy of movies that will follow Star Wars: Episode IX. “As we got to the end of Episode VIII, we had a great time working with [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] and with Disney and we kind of said, ‘How can we keep this party going? How can we keep working together?’ And I kind of threw out there, like the most interesting thing to me would be to tell a new story told over three movies where we go someplace else. And we go, kind of the potential of like a wide-open blue sky of, let’s go to a different part of the galaxy. Maybe a different time. I don’t know…”
…In an interesting note, Lucasfilm Story Group member Leland Chee spoke with SyFy’s Fandom Files Podcast about Disney’s decision to expel the Expanded Universe from official cannon saying the death of Chewbacca was a key role in their choice. “Part of that [original decision] was Chewbacca, because he can’t speak and just speaks in growls, he was a challenging character to write for in novels. Publishing had decided they needed to kill somebody, and it was Chewbacca. … But if you have the opportunity to bring back Chewbacca into a live-action film, you’re not gonna deprive fans that. There’s no way that I’d want to do an Episode VII that didn’t have Chewbacca in it and have to explain that Chewbacca had a moon fall on his head. And if we were going to overturn a monumental decision like that, everything else was really just minor in comparison.”
…Speaking with Yahoo!, Liam Neeson talked about a potential return to the franchise for the proposed Obi-Wan Kenobi spin-off movie saying, “No one’s been in touch with me. I know in the Star Wars world anything is possible. In the first one, The Phantom Menace, I died but we know, you know, Jedis come back and stuff but no one’s been in touch. We’ll see…”
…Someone who has returned to the franchise yet again is Ian McDiarmid who will again reprise his role of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars Rebels. Check out the trailer here…
…Disney and Lucasfilm announced they are bringing some of the galaxy far, far away’s biggest rivalries to mobile devices with the competitive action shooter Star Wars: Rivals. Check out a selection of screenshots and game details here…
…EA Game announced the release of Patch 1.1 for Star Wars Battlefront II, which adds new content including Iden Versio’s TIE/In Fighter to the Starfighter Assault mode, as well as the Crait map to the Blast mode. Check out the full patch notes here…
…Resident film grump Anghus Houvouras argues that Star Wars has lost its luster in his latest article here…
…Ricky Church reviews Star Wars: Forces of Destiny – Hera which you can read here…
…And finally, Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s Rose Tico makes her Star Wars Adventures debut in issue #6 this week: The biggest new character from The Last Jedi, Rose Tico, makes her Star Wars Adventures debut in this special one-shot story! Rose prefers to solve problems from behind the scenes, but the threat of the First Order has put her front and center.
That’s all for this week – may the Force be with you.
Luke Owen is the former 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.
