Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens

[Magnus]

This is and has always been his vision for the saga. Finally years later with advanced techniology he was able to achieve it to the potential he wanted.

Or so he says.

 

I think a more likely scenario is that he wanted to buy another mansion and the toy sales were slowing down.

[Retro_Link]

Here are Luke's thoughts.

 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/11/01/mark-hamill-talks-star-wars-episode-vii

 

Mark Hamill Talks Star Wars: Episode VII

 

Following Disney's Lucasfilm buyout on Tuesday, Star Wars poster boy Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker himself) revealed that he -- much like everyone else -- was caught completely by surprise when he heard the big news.

 

"I had no idea that George [Lucas] was going to sell to Disney until I read it online like everybody else," Hamill told EW. "He did tell us last summer about wanting to go on and do [Episodes] VII, VIII and IX, and that [newly appointed Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy would be doing them. He seems to be in a really good place. He's really happy. And that's nice because I know that when we were making the movies, he was not a jolly guy on set. [Laughs]"

 

So what did Lucas have to say last summer about the third trilogy? "Last August, he asked Carrie and I to have lunch with him and we did," he said. "I thought he was going to talk about either his retirement or the Star Wars TV series that I’ve heard about -- which I don't think we were going to be involved in anyway... So when he said, 'We decided we're going to do Episodes VII, VIII and IX,' I was just gobsmacked. 'What? Are you nuts?!' [Laughs]"

 

Continued Hamill, "I can see both sides of it. Because in a way, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end and we all lived happily ever after, and that's the way it should be -- and it's great that people have fond memories, if they do have fond memories. But on the other hand, there's this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material. It's one of those things: people either just don't care for it or are passionate about it. I guess that defines what cult movies are all about. We'll see."

 

And as for the buyout itself? "I have mixed feelings about that, but [Disney hasn't] done badly by Marvel and the Muppets and Pixar," Hamill responded. "It's one of those big decisions that at first seems unusual but then the more you look at it, the more it makes sense."

 

According to a recent interview with Lucas biographer Dale Pollock, the original outlines for Episodes VII, VIII and IX called for an older Luke Skywalker. While this is by no means evidence of anything -- after all, those particular drafts might already be scrapped -- there is still a chance that Hamill could reprise his role in the new films. Of course, for now, this all remains under the bubble of fanboy speculation. Asked whether Lucas brought up the possibility of Hamill or Fisher reprising their roles, Hamill told EW, "Well, no, he was just talking about writers and the fact that he wouldn't be directing. I guess he wanted us to know before everybody else knew. He said, 'Now you can’t tell anybody!' [Laughs] Even now I'm nervous about saying anything. I just don't know!"

[Ashley]

Well if that's the case that's fucking bullshit...why cobble together three episodes of a tv show release it and market it as a movie when it in fact isn't?! Just about sums up everything that's become wrong with Star Wars.

 

South Park did it as well, more than once I think too.

 

I know the original movie was original, but they've done direct to DVD ones since.

[EEVILMURRAY]

 

Another small point that illustrates this is when Luke is on the Falcon and Obi Wan comes up with a make shift way of training him using a helmet with a blast shield down and the laser ball.

It is never said that it was a makeshift exercise, it could very well be how they did it in the prequels. Obi-Wan just happened to stumble on a floating laser ball in Han's swag.

 

Through this test Yoda shows Luke the most important thing, that his strength doesn't come from his physical prowess with the light sabre but from spiritual development and his mastery of the force.

 

Yoda is a wise and great Jedi not because he's some light sabre wielding action star, but because he mastered the force through thoughtful mediation.

You make it sound like they both can't go hand in hand ("It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force... but by our skills with a lightsaber..."), Jedi can be handy with a lightsabre as well as being able to call on the Force to help them with their psychic powers (which is pretty much all a Jedi is: psychic/telekentic) why is it hard to believe that Yoda can call upon his mastery of the force to give himself some top notch speed? Do you bitch that much about how other Jedi move?

 

I'm not sure how much leeway Disney are going to get with all this. There has been several stories and games showing the chronicology after the Empire/films* and I'm not sure how many of them are accepted at canon but I'm sure several are. Off the top of my head I know Luke converts a former Sith** lady Mara Jade and they totally do it and have kids.

 

*I would like to see the return of Palpatine and the Darth Maul with robot legs.

 

**There's always more than two.

[are1981]

That's the problem though. Lucas was not solely responsible for the original trilogy. In fact he was under heavy scrutiny from others and that's clearly why the original films were so magnificent.

 

When Lucas came to make the prequels he was the big cheese and no dared to challenge him. It was all his way and it showed. When one guy makes all the decisions and everyone around him lets him have his way often things spiral out of control.

 

I understand your critisism, and agree to many of your points. I clearly have not given this as much thought as you.

 

The mystery surrounding the original Star Wars movies, its characters, and its history, was something I loved. However, when the prequel trilogy was announced, I looked forward to get some explanation. But I agree in the finished trilogy it was too much explanation, and executed poorly.

 

I agree that the prequel trilogy is lesser movies, and parts of the movies is horrible film-making. But as Star Wars movies, I consider them mediocre to good. The prequel movies are not good movies on its own, but within the Star Wars universe, they are somewhat good entertainment. The original movies, however, stand up proudly on their own, and I consider them to be great films!

 

Watching any movie every year is not my thing. I don't know why. I think I am slightly bored when rewatching a movie too close to the last watch-through. That same applies to watching TV-series and playing video games.

 

I am a Star Wars fan. I assume I have watched the movies approximately every two years, and I have played through many of the video games. Some of my friends watch the movies far more often than me, maybe every year. So maybe for the reasons mentioned, many plot holes have caught other people's attention, but not mine.

[bob]

I'm not sure why this is such a shock to anyone, and i'm surprised it's taken this long.

 

The Star Wars franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, which has been releasing toys/games/tv shows for the past 30 years, and every new release (of toys/games/lego etc) has been met, generally, with cries of "yep, liked that, more please".

 

Mention that they might make another film however, and everyone cries out sacrelige, and Vader style 'Nooooooooooooooooooooo's'.

 

Bizarre. I'm looking forward to the new films, i'm sure they be very enjoyable and well worth £6 of my money (or however much it'll be in 2015).

[EEVILMURRAY]

One thing which has always pissed me off about the prequels is in Episode II where the new Queen of the Naboo says "We must keep our faith in the Republic." Wow, good fucking Royal advice there. Very productive.

[Agent Gibbs]

In The Empire Strikes Back when Luke goes to Dagobah to train he believes that Yoda (the great Jedi master) will be a stereotypical warrior. At first he completely over looks Yoda believing him to be just a simple and annoying local.

 

Through this test Yoda shows Luke the most important thing, that his strength doesn't come from his physical prowess with the light sabre but from spiritual development and his mastery of the force.

 

Yoda is a wise and great Jedi not because he's some light sabre wielding action star, but because he mastered the force through thoughtful mediation.

 

The whole point that Yoda teaches Luke is that it's not about the physical, it's about spiritualism and self belief.

 

I never saw that scene as that at all, i saw that as a slight on Luke and his perception of all things, that he was expecting some archtypical warrior stype, large of stature and physically impossing, and automatically assumed that Yoda could be none of that and would have no combat skills so completely dismissed him outright aka judging a book by its cover.

 

As for showing spiritual mastery, Yoda to me displayed a slightly higher degree of spirituality than Obi Wan, so to me that shows all Jedi master the spiritual side of the force, it doesn't lead me to believe Yoda neglected the combat disciplines as by his very description as a jedi master you would expect him to have experience and a degree of mastery over all aspects of the jedi code to achieve said level within the jedi order.

In typical disciplines on earth such as martial arts or monastic pursuits, the higher echelons of such orders are only achieved through mastery of all aspects of it, those who focus on one area either do not achieve the highest levels, or attain a title befitting of mastery of only one aspect.

So for Yoda to be a "master" he has to have a high degree of mastery of all aspects of the force and jedi code.

With regards to Luke's training, as they were in a combat situation Obi Wan trained the combat side of the jedi code first so Luke could defend himself, Yoda seeing the deficiency in the spiritual mastery of the Force focused on training Luke on this aspect to balance out Luke's training, that and i'm sure had Lucas been able to do it at the time, i'm sure Yoda may well have displayed lightsaber control.

 

Thats the way i've always seen it, long before the prequels, and once the prequels came out and showed that Yoda could do amazing things with the force AND display a high degree of light saber control, i believed my interpretation to be the most accurate, given it fitted the creators view of him

 

 

It is never said that it was a makeshift exercise, it could very well be how they did it in the prequels. Obi-Wan just happened to stumble on a floating laser ball in Han's swag.

 

 

You make it sound like they both can't go hand in hand ("It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force... but by our skills with a lightsaber..."), Jedi can be handy with a lightsabre as well as being able to call on the Force to help them with their psychic powers (which is pretty much all a Jedi is: psychic/telekentic) why is it hard to believe that Yoda can call upon his mastery of the force to give himself some top notch speed? Do you bitch that much about how other Jedi move?

 

Totally agree with both of these and would like to add that even in the original trillogy it was shown jedi could use the force to enhance their movement,speed and reactions just because we never saw MASTER yoda do the same as Luke (a trainee) doesn't mean he couldn't do them, by his level in the jedi order he should damn well have been able to do the same if not 10 times more, which we see in AOTC

 

 

I don understand how people feel the prequels cheapen the original trillogy, but its not a view i take, i see them as enhancing them! i mean the original trillogy look like masterpieces compared to the prequels.

 

IF any outline Lucas had from when he devised the stories that became star wars still exist for episodes 7-9 then it would be nice to have them as a base and have someone who isn't as blinkered as him go over them and improve them. As was said the original trilogy had scrutiny over it and became great, the prequels everybody just let lucas run free, by the sounds of it the future trilogy will be back to the same process the original trilogy saw and will see less of Lucas' influence, which should mean no poor things like jar-jar, midclorians or Hayden Christianson

[jayseven]

Whenever I read posts by people who know all this stuff about a made up thing it just makes me realise how little I know about anything.

 

Star Wars makes money. Everything they have done has made butttonnes of money (three t's worth). ERGO: Star Wars works.

 

I'd love to see new installments simply because, as can be seen by the universal reaction to the news; this shit is big. This shit is going down in the history books as big. It's always awesome to actively know that something that will last beyond your years on the planet is happening as it's happening.

 

Even if it's shit.

[are1981]

Here are Luke's thoughts.

 

Very interesting stuff! Very. I read it on the original publisher's website on Wednesday. It was a whole lot to take in the first 24 hours after the news broke! Mark and Carrie talking with George last year? Incredible.

 

"Luke's thoughts"? I think Luke would be extremely offended finding out he is fictional, and did not help bring peace to the galaxy, but existed just for entertainment.

[MoogleViper]

[flameboy]

South Park did it as well, more than once I think too.

 

I know the original movie was original, but they've done direct to DVD ones since.

 

Oh I had no idea not really ever followed South Park, I guess direct to DVD is slightly one step further removed.

 

 

 

It is never said that it was a makeshift exercise, it could very well be how they did it in the prequels. Obi-Wan just happened to stumble on a floating laser ball in Han's swag.

 

You make it sound like they both can't go hand in hand ("It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force... but by our skills with a lightsaber..."), Jedi can be handy with a lightsabre as well as being able to call on the Force to help them with their psychic powers (which is pretty much all a Jedi is: psychic/telekentic) why is it hard to believe that Yoda can call upon his mastery of the force to give himself some top notch speed? Do you bitch that much about how other Jedi move?

 

I'm not sure how much leeway Disney are going to get with all this. There has been several stories and games showing the chronicology after the Empire/films* and I'm not sure how many of them are accepted at canon but I'm sure several are. Off the top of my head I know Luke converts a former Sith** lady Mara Jade and they totally do it and have kids.

 

*I would like to see the return of Palpatine and the Darth Maul with robot legs.

 

**There's always more than two.

 

1. True it never actually is said that it's a make shift exercise...also there was talk that a previous owner of the Millenium Falcon being a certain Mace Windu. As far as I know it was never confirmed via the movies though. But it's perfectly viable that the equipment was left in there as a legacy of that (fuck I'm doing that hellish thing of filling in the holes around Lucas' stupid writing.)

 

2. Yeah Mara Jade is a person, there are number of other Force sensitive individuals who they meet who could be described as Sith as such (Mara Jade actually had some training, whereas others don't) I think all the novels are classed as canon and approved by Lucas. As far as I know they are all screened by the company. I know when they released the New Jedi Order series they asked for a list of characters that could be killed off as they apparently wanted to kill of Luke and were told no way in hell they could do this.

 

I think Disney would be daft to cast aside the canon that's been built up it's another cash cow there are plenty of people who rush out and buy every novel rewind 10 years and I was that guy!

Edited November 2, 2012 by flameboy

[Retro_Link]

Director set?...

 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/01/24/jj-abrams-to-direct-star-wars-episode-vii

 

J.J. Abrams to Direct Star Wars: Episode VII

 

Remember how J.J. Abrams was NOT going to direct Star Wars: Episode VII? The Wrap just broke the news that the Star Trek director is now in fact going to direct Star Wars: Episode VII! Commence internet freak out!

 

More to come shortly...

[Ramar]

The JJ Abrams Star Trek film is brilliant, the new one looks like it'll be just as good. So if he's doing Star Wars it could well be a very good thing.

[Dcubed]

Way too fanboyish to believe. You can't cross the streams, you just can't!

 

That being said OH MY if it's true!

[Cube]

Way too fanboyish to believe. You can't cross the streams, you just can't!

 

It's not like Star Wars and Star Trek haven't crossed before. LucasFilm ILM have done effects for some Star Trek films - even putting in the Millennium Falcon (First Contact) and R2-D2 (Star Trek 09).

[Serebii]

It's not like Star Wars and Star Trek haven't crossed before. LucasFilm ILM have done effects for some Star Trek films - even putting in the Millennium Falcon (First Contact) and R2-D2 (Star Trek 09).

Wasn't the Enterprise in The Phantom Menace too? I remember reading that years ago.

 

I'm not too happy with this if it means Disney lock him into an exclusivity contract like they did with Joss Whedon. He had a trilogy going with Star Trek :/

[Dcubed]

It's not like Star Wars and Star Trek haven't crossed before. LucasFilm ILM have done effects for some Star Trek films - even putting in the Millennium Falcon (First Contact) and R2-D2 (Star Trek 09).

 

Yeah true. And I think the Enterprise appeared in a background shot in one of the SW prequels as well...

 

I still don't see it happening, but I think he'd be a very interesting choice for SW7!

 

(Come on, you know you want this )

 

I'd love to see his take on the SW universe!

Edited January 24, 2013 by Dcubed

[Guy]

Don't care who is involved as long as they do a good job.

[Serebii]

A director is only as good as the script he's presenting

[bob]

I'm sure it'll be good.

 

How hard can it be to make a good film in the Star Wars universe. Any semi-competent director could probably do it.

[Serebii]

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/02/05/disney-ceo-bob-iger-confirms-star-wars-standalone-movies

Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed rumors that there are indeed standalone Star Wars movies in the works in addition to the next Star Wars trilogy.

 

In an interview with CNBC, Iger said the studio will make different Star Wars solo films during the same time frame as the new trilogy will be released.

 

"We are in fact working on a few stand-alone films," said Iger. "(Lawrence) Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are both working on films derived from great Star Wars characters that are not part of the overall saga. So we plan to make Star Wars VII, VIII and IX over roughly a six-year period of time starting in 2015. But there are going to be a few other films released in that period of time too."

[Ashley]

A director is only as good as the script he's presenting

 

In tv, pretty much, but in film they actually weild enough power that they can do/request rewrites, hide bad scripting with veneer etc.

 

Besides, they've got the Toy Sory 3 writer, it's going to be fine :p

[Cube]

The first "standalone" film is supposedly a Yoda one.

[Retro_Link]

I guess the fans will finally be getting the Boba Fett movie they've been asking for.

Disney can be quite certain of its success given how long people have been wanting to see more of the character, and it will also allow them to chance to make a very different, darker, Star Wars movie.

 

May be chance of a Mace movie too as Samuel L Jackson recently said he'd like it if could find a way to make Mace return in the new trilogy; but if they don't then I guess with such a cool actor as him there's potential for a spin off.

 

 

I'm quite surprised if Yoda is the first character they're considering.

Personally I don't get excited by that one bit and it's not exactly something people have been asking for. It feels like we already have a good understanding of that character, even if there are hundreds of years to his character. Feels like we've already seen him in a lot of different story situations... leading & commanding/fighting/teaching.