Guess what – it’s a Force Awakens busy edition of The Week in Star Wars. The movie is finally here, the reviews are in and it’s had a whopping box office opening. There’s also some bits and bobs from the Star Wars Universe…
Kicking things off with – you guessed it – Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film opened here in the UK on Thursday at 00:01 and opened in the US on Friday. Did you see the movie? What did you make of it? Well you can read my review of the movie here, Rob Kodjer’s review of the movie here, and FMTV’s spoiler-free thoughts on the movie here, and their spoiler-full thoughts here. Expect more thoughts from the Flickering Myth writing staff as the weeks roll on. You can also listen to the Flickering Myth Podcast spoiler-free and spoiler-full review below and the Flickering Myth Review podcast here..
…Speaking of my own thoughts, I penned an article this week titled: “Is Star Wars: The Force Awakens just Fan-Fiction on a Big Budget?”, which you can read here…
…But before the movie was released, the world premiere took place in Los Angeles and featured the likes of J.J. Abrams, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and even George Lucas himself. You can watch a load of interviews with them here…
…After that, the cast and crew headed over to London for the European premiere of the film, and our own Simon Columb was down for the UK Press Conference featuring J.J. Abrams, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Gwendeline Christie and more. You can read his report on the events here…
…But how did the movie perform? Well, the expectations were that it could make around $650 million worldwide, making it the biggest opening weekend of all-time. This was based around expert predictions, and the fact the film already earned $100 million domestically from pre-sale tickets alone and then shattered opening day records with $250 million domestic. The final number was $517 million worldwide, which broke various different records, but did fall short of expectations. It also earned less than Jurassic World did on Saturday and Sunday, which means we may not see The Force Awakens take over Avatar as the biggest movie of all-time. The movie is still set to open in China, but Star Wars isn’t a big deal over there, and the prequel movies only earned around $18 million each when released last decade. So, time will tell on this one…
…If you have seen the movie, then this might interest you. You may recall this rumour earlier this year that was confirmed by Simon Pegg. Well it turns out it was true. We got a lot of heat on Twitter for posting who it was, so we won’t spoil anything here…
…Speaking of which, there was also a surprise prequel trilogy cameo in The Force Awakens. Who was it? Find out here…
…And speaking of spoilers, here’s a spoiler-filled interview with J.J. Abrmas about why Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side. Be warned, there’s loads of spoilers in there…
…There was also a whole new batch of TV spots dropped online this week in the run-up to the film’s release. So if you had been avoiding footage and have now seen the movie, you can finally catch up on them. There was also a few featurettes released that focused on The Women of Star Wars, the story and stunts, BB-8 and the shoot in Abu Dhabi…
…And here’s a batch of concept art for the movie featuring Leia, Stormtroopers and BB-8…
…One person who wasn’t happy about Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Quentin Tarantino, who felt that his latest movie The Hateful Eight has been bumped out of cinemas in favour of the big budget sci-fi opera. “We were gonna play at the Cinerama Dome on the 25th,” he says. “We were gonna open there and play there exclusively for two weeks,” Tarantino told Howard Stern. “And Star Wars was gonna play the two weeks before us. So the thing about it was, Disney, who owns Star Wars, decided ‘well, you know what? Maybe we wanna play throughout the entire holiday season.’ So we’re gonna go to the Cinerama Dome and say that they can’t honor their contract with us to show The Hateful Eight. And the Arclight people that own the Cinerama Dome, said ‘no no, you can’t do that. We have a deal with the Hateful Eight people, and showing it in 70mm. That’s what we do.’ We have the 70mm projectors. As of yesterday, Disney came to the Arclight people and said ‘no, you are going to play Star Wars in the Cinerama Dome for the entire holiday season, and if you don’t, if you honor your deal with the Hateful Eight, we will not allow you to have Star Wars, the biggest movie in the world, we will not allow you to show it at any of your Arclight movie theaters…'”
…Zack Snyder was trying to jump on the Star Wars band wagon this week by releasing some mash-ups of The Force Awakens with his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. For more on superhero news, check out The Week in Spandex…
…Andy Serkis was in the news this week as he made the humours comment that Supreme Leader Snoke was actually an evil Jar Jar Binks, the infamous Gungan from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace…
…Disney Infinity celebrated the release of The Force Awakens by releasing a new poster for Disney Infinity 3.0 which features the new cast of characters…
…The Force Awakens has only just been released, but Daisy Ridley has been talking about the script for Star Wars: Episode VIII, which you can read here…
…Moving away from The Force Awakens for a moment and the chaps over at Screen Junkies released their Honest Trailer for Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith…
…And speaking of Episode III, Scott Davis and Rohan Morbey sat down for the Flickering Myth Review podcast on the whole Star Wars Saga so far, which you can listen to below:
…Looking ahead to the next batch of Star Wars films, Harrison Ford was asked about the upcoming anthology movie based around the adventures of a young Han Solo. Someone asked him about this at the UK Press Conference for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the actor simply replied that he wanted “nothing to do with it”. So, that clears that up…
…You can read Neil Calloway’s excellent article “A World Without Star Wars” here, and Ricky Church’s “Top 10 Star Wars Quotes” here…
…If you’ve been reading the past few editions of The Week in Star Wars, you’ll know that the Flickering Myth writing staff have been penning their Memorable Star Wars Moments. Just the one this week, and it’s James Garcia’s “The Detention Level Rescue”. And if you enjoyed that, you can look back at Gary Collinson’s “The Binary Sunset”, Ricky Church’s “Luke vs. Vader in Cloud City”, Tai Freligh’s Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Darth Maul from Episode I, Villordsutch’s Han Solo being tortured in The Empire Strikes Back, Simon Columb’s Shimi Skywalker’s death from Attack of the Clones, Anghus Houvouras’ battle over the Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi, Ricky Church’s Umbara arc from The Clone Wars, and Chris Cooper’s Luke vs. Darth Vader on the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi
…And finally, here are comic book previews for the week. First up is Star Wars #15: Another tale of Obi-Wan’s exile on Tatooine! Owen Lars took Luke in…but he refused to let Ben be part of his life. What trouble could have been stirred up by Ben protecting Luke? Next up is Star Wars: Kanan #9: Caleb Dume enters the Clone Wars for the first time! He and his new Master Bilaba take command of a Clone troop…And face one of the most deadly Serparatist generals…GRIEVOUS!
That’s all for this week – may The Force be with you…
Luke Owen
