New Star Wars: The Last Jedi Details Revealed

By Jordan Breeding  |  May 24, 2017 | 5:48pm
Image via Lucasfilm/YouTube
Movies News Star Wars
New Star Wars: The Last Jedi Details Revealed

Several new, exciting details have been released today in a Vanity Fair cover story. Over the course of a series of interviews—including ones with Mark Hamill and director Rian Johnson (whose directorial debut, Brick, is absolutely worth checking out)—we finally have access to some juicy information months ahead of The Last Jedi’s December release. Let’s dig in.

New Characters

Rian Johnson was given a surprising amount of freedom to create when he sat down to write The Last Jedi. If anything, Johnson claims he almost had too much leeway to make his vision a reality. He actually made sure to meet with Lucasfilm’s story dream team twice a week to bounce new ideas around. All of this sounds like good news to us, given Johnson’s impressive last sci-fi film, the critically acclaimed, mind-bending Looper.

Three of his creations for the forthcoming film are brand-new characters. Firstly, there’s a “shady character” with hidden motivations played by Benicio Del Toro, whose character name isn’t revealed in the film itself, but who is called DJ by the crew. Secondly, Jurassic Park’s Laura Dern will portray a prominent Resistance officer named Vice Admiral Holdo, who you can see below. And finally, Kelly Marie Tran will play a lowly maintenance worker for the Resistance named Rose Tico. There’s also a gunner character named Paige who appears to be the sister of Rose and a mentee of Poe Dameron.

New Planets

The first planetary reveal is that the green mountain planet Luke Skywalker has been chilling on is named Ahch-To and is home to the last Jedi temple. Luke has been hanging out with the locals, who have so far been described as “not locals.” Additionally, the film will traverse uncharted territory with a stop on Canto Blight which is described as, “A glittering casino city.” Here, Johnson will portray the wealthy elite in a universe that has largely focused on dirty, sandy gangster types. Both locales sound like interesting new environments for our heroes to play around in.

Other Details

The report goes on to mention that while Luke and Rey will definitely do some training, it’s not a massive part of the movie and their training won’t necessarily look like what we’d expect. Additionally, during Hamill’s interview, he describes his perfect way of handling Han’s death (he wishes Luke and Leia were present for it) and laments Carrie Fisher’s untimely death late last year. While Leia’s presence will be unaffected for VIII, the character was supposed to be front and center for IX. Fisher’s death has required a few rewrites, as the filmmakers are unwilling to recreate her like Grand Moff Tarkin was in Rogue One.

All of these new details are just getting us pumped for our December return to a galaxy far, far away. Be sure to re-watch the first trailer for The Last Jedi here.

 
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