Solid Snake

This sounds cool.

Big Boy Laroux

Mark Hammill = obi-wan (pure speculation)

Josh-da-man

I think the Dugs (like Sebulba) were at least partially quadrupedal, weren' they?

lopper

I think Adam Driver looks fucking fantastic. I'm happy he's not your stereotypical big muscle, punchy-punchy bad guy. There's something more to his evil and menace than that, and that's awesome.

RocShemp

banthafett

Chrome Trooper-

In trailer- looked fucking sweet
In photo- looks as fucking sweet and interesting that it's a female character
Looked up photos who plays her- lost interest fast.

islandclaws

Why? She's great on GoT.

E Unit

Good gravy, so Captain Phasma is a nearly 7ft tall stormtrooper.

Kylo Ren looks anorexic. Starving Jedi isn't cool.

fumanstan

For what it's worth, my saying that Driver looks far from bad ass has little to do with wanting more muscle like Rob V's comment. Especially in this universe where the main threats have never been about physical strength. He just seems like a regular dude in that shot, nothing particularly striking that would make me think he's a bad ass.

RocShemp

Another villain revealed.

joe_b

It's not entirely cut and dry, but each new charachter seems to purposely have parallels to the old gang. Potential spoilers, folks:

Shannon Nutt

There's something about the Adam Driver photo that looks off to me...like he's been digitally inserted into that photograph or something - or it's a composite of two photos.

anomynous

RichC2

Yeah, she looks like a warrior and makes a lot of people seem tiny. That's usually the role she gets hired for.

Ash Ketchum

Danny Trejo's in this?! And he's playing Machete?! Awesome, now I'm in!

rocket1312

Come on. Now you're just purposely trying to confuse Taffer.

lopper

I think it is. If you watch the BTS video, you can see where/when the photo of the troopers is taken. Driver doesn't appear to be there at the time.

joe_b

Here's part of the interview Abrams did with Vanity Fair (including tidbits that didn't make it into the cover story). This is from their newsletter, but the rest will be posted on their website tomorrow.

Bruce Handy: Your movie is taking place 30-something years after Return of the Jedi. Are you going to give it some of that fill-in-blanks quality, in terms of whatever’s happened in the Star Wars galaxy across those decades?

J.J. Abrams: Well, what’s cool is we’ve obviously had a lot of time [during the development process] to talk about what’s happened outside of the borders of the story that you’re seeing. So there are, of course, references to things, and some are very oblique so that hopefully the audience can infer what the characters are referring to. We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something. I think that the key is—and whether we’ve accomplished that or not is, of course, up to the audience—but the key is that references be essential so that you don’t reference a lot of things that feel like, oh, we’re laying pipe for, you know, an animated series or further movies. It should feel like things are being referenced for a reason.

Tell me about what it was like working on the new film both as its writer-director and as a hard-core Star Wars fan going back to your childhood.

Maybe the weirdest moment, which came months after production, was the first time I sat down with John Williams to show him about a half an hour of the movie. I can’t describe the feeling. All I will say is, just to state the facts of it: I am about to show John Williams 30 minutes of a Star Wars movie that he has not seen [and] that I directed. That’s probably as surreal as it gets in my professional life experience.

The first three Star Wars movies had a certain knowingness, because of the way the characters are, so archetypal, and the way they reference a lot of film history, like Luke gazing out at the two setting suns the way someone would in a John Ford Western. That was such a part of the whole “movie brat” thing in the 70s, that George Lucas was a part of. Did you fool around with any of those kinds of nods at movie history?

There are a few specific references that are kind of my own little stupid, secret ones. But what I realized early on was it was all about point of view—meaning it’s not like you just objectively throw in a star field or a spaceship or a desert planet or whatever the thing. The question is, who is that person in that experience? Why does it matter to them? What are they desperate for or afraid of? For me, you could reference all the stuff you want, but the experience of the audience in this is that they’ve got to be sitting with someone who happens to be on-screen going through these experiences. And then that’s not just a desert planet; it could be the most desperate place in the world. Or that’s not just a spaceship flying by; it could be the greatest, most heroic moment of your life. That, to me, has been the constant struggle: to make sure that none of these things are treated like either they’re a museum piece and we’re trying to honor them or they’re gratuitous and thrown in because, well, it’s a Star Wars movie so you’ve got to put these things in. Everything has got to be essential to the characters in the film.

PopcornTreeCt

Brienne Tarth as a badass stormtrooper commander is pretty much my favorite thing about this movie.

Throwing Copper

Has anyone seen this on news stands yet? I checked with Barnes & Noble on Monday and they still had the old issue.

Maybe later this week it will be out for the public.

joe_b

^ It's due out next Tuesday (5/12).


Oh, and here's a new Mr. Plinkett video (NSFW):

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/93uSIKzPmik?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

RocShemp

I never bothered with the BD releases so this is the first time I've seen the CGI Yoda added to Episode I.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxaZxpNTm8A?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

windom

Are we even sure we'll see her face in the movie? They never showed a real stormtrooper without his helmet in the OT. And we know there's at least one in TFA. Why show a bunch of troopers out w/o their helmets. If they intended to show her face, they could have easily made her some kind commander that doesn't wear the armor.

Big Boy Laroux

Understood, but I seriously doubt they'd cast a woman in that role if they didn't intend for everyone to SEE her as a woman. Otherwise, just cast some random tall guy.

Maybe we'll see a bunch without their helmets so we don't assume they're all jango fett.

brayzie

I guess I don't have a problem with Lucas tinkering with the old film when he's successful with the execution. That BD version of Yoda is so much better than the original that looks like he's high out of his mind.

Those scenes are weird. Mace Windu acts like he's always pissed. He believes in the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force but when Qui Gon wants to bring him before the council Mace is like, "*sigh* fine, do what you want."
When Qui Gon Jinn is talking to the council there's some long necked Jedi alien in the background, mocking him by swaying his head back and forth the entire time.