Vanity Fair blessed us this week with their traditional behind-the-scenes peek at The Rise of Skywalker by Lev Grossman, alongside some stunning photos courtesy of Annie Leibovitz. It took me a while to finish this up thanks to work, but … Continue reading Skywalker Rises in Vanity Fair
I recently read Ursula K. Le Guin’s No Time to Spare, a collection of short essays. One of them, ‘Utopiyin, Utopiyang’, was about dystopian literature and its exploration of that balance, of yin and yang. Some of the essay’s quotes hit … Continue reading Rey and Kylo, Yin and Yang
I came out of The Force Awakens with Rey having solidly become one of my favourite STar Wars characters ever. She was up there with Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme and Ahsoka for me. So I begged my family to let me write this … Continue reading TLJ Character Studies #3: Rey
I took my sweet time gathering my thoughts about this movie. In fact, I watched it three times before I decided I was indeed ready to write this post. My review of The Last Jedi will contain, as the title suggests, … Continue reading ‘The Last Jedi’ Spoiler Review
What better way to return to production on this blog than with a brand spanking new The Last Jedi trailer, released in the early hours of Tuesday (UK time). There is so much to unpack here and I am still amazed by … Continue reading ‘The Last Jedi’s Second Trailer is here!
It is unbelievable but it is only 10 days till the Rogue One premiere in the UK!!! The biggest news this week are of course the interviews of the Rogue One cast and director. It includes an interview of Gareth Edwards, … Continue reading Weekly Round-Up
We haven’t been able to post this week but hopefully we’ll be getting Star Wars: Rebels reviews up, starting next week! However, plenty has been happening in Star Wars news: Kylo Ren goes Undercover on Starkiller Base (NME) The Force Awakens hits … Continue reading Weekly Round-Up
When the first teaser trailer of The Force Awakens hit the Internet, a lot of the talk surrounding it was focused on the new lightsaber design. Stephen Colbert went on a very amusing rant and the fan community exploded with theories, … Continue reading Corridor Chat: Let’s Talk About Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber
May the Fourth is always a special day to be a Star Wars fan because it’s the day on which you can be as open and ridiculous about your Star Wars obsession as you want to be. In the case of Vanity Fair, this has regularly meant a cover and a spread dedicated to the Star Wars film coming out. Lucky us, they repeated the tradition this year with some great behind-the-scenes pictures from the The Force Awakens set. Alongside this, there were some name and character reveals, which were all really exciting. All the pictures below belong to Vanity Fair.
The Cover
As far as covers go, I’d say this is a pretty great one. The tag lines ‘The New Heroes! The Old Heroes! The High Stakes’ definitely fits with the five characters chosen here. Although the cover doesn’t show us anything that we haven’t seen before, focusing in on Finn, Rey, BB-8, Han Solo and Chewbacca makes me think that the emotional arc of SW:TFA might potentially be about them. Clearly these are the characters which Abrams wants the audience to focus on most, at least for now. Vanity Fair always seems to have chosen covers with an “emotional” impact, rather than showcasing the villains etc, if one thinks back to the 2002 Anakin/Padme and the 2005 “whole family” covers.
Kylo Ren/Adam Driver
It should come as no surprise to have it confirmed that Adam Driver is indeed playing Kylo Ren, yet I think it’s interesting to see that Kylo is a human. The mask had led me to think that potentially we were dealing with a character that either wanted to remain disguised or was potentially disfigured the way that Darth Vader was. I personally don’t think this is the best of pictures since Driver looks slightly edited in, but I am still a major fan of the costume. It’s different from the Sith costumes we’ve seen before while clearly following in their tradition.
Maz Katana/ Lupita N
yong’o
Now for the character reveal that I am most excited about. There were some rumours that the hand initially holding Anakin’s lightsaber in the new teaser trailer was Nyong’o, but this picture makes it clear that her character is CGI. Best about this reveal for me is the fact that she plays a pirate. If I look at the pirate figure best known to me within Star Wars-canon, that would be Hondo Ohnaka from The Clone Wars series. He is a hilarious character who hides a good heart under a ton of swagger. Personally I think we will probably meet Maz on Jakku within the first part of the film, but any conjecture is still very much valid here. Also known is that she has a castle, which is filled with the riffraff below.
Who could they be?
I’m thinking that, as a pirate with a castle of her own, it wouldn’t be unlikely that Maz Katana has a similar crew the way that Jabba the Hutt, or even Hondo, did. All these creatures look like they would have fitted perfectly into Jabba’s palace. I like the different designs going on here and the throwback that they represent. Clearly there is a continuation here from The Return of the Jedi but I think we can be pretty sure there will be some CGI characters added to the mix.
Poe Dameron/ Oscar Isaac
Clone Corridor 
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