With recent news that there would NOT be a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens during this weeks D23 convention, but thanks to EW new pictures have been released.
Along with the photos EW got some new details on the film’s story and characters.
Abrams says his wife also helped him get over his hesitation of doing the project:
“You rarely get a chance to be involved in something that you would typically be an audience for. Katie, my wife, said, ‘If you want to do this and you don’t, you’re going to regret this.’ It was really about being willing to take that leap, and jump into the possibilities of what these characters are doing, and where they are.”
When Abrams signed on, there were a lot of possibilities on the table on where to with the project but no finalized story.
“[They] had just been hypothesizing and throwing out a bunch of what-ifs, but there was no story in place. It was, without doubt, a formidable assignment. There were so many options and so many paths that could be taken. Even when we were in debate — and sometimes it was frustrating and heated — it was always thrilling, because it seemed almost everywhere you looked there was something potentially extraordinary, which felt very much like the DNA of Star Wars itself.”
Abrams continued:
“Any good story has conflict. And if all were rosy 30-some years post-Jedi, we would be hard-pressed to find an interesting story to tell.”
Lawrence Kasdan also mentions where he wanted to go with the story:
“I thought, ‘Wow, okay, these people have lived — they’re in a different place in their lives, Han and Leia and so on. They’ve lived the same 30 years I have. What would that be like? How would you see things differently?’. And I was trying to figure out how I saw things differently, and one of the surprises is that you don’t learn all that much. You haven’t become much wiser than you were, and things are not clearer to you, and the world is just as confusing as it always was — and that’s a kind of lovely thing to get to write about again. Age does not necessarily bring wisdom; it just brings experience.”
The site also indicated the following information concerning the following characters:
- Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron now flies a splinter group known as the Resistance.
- Princess Leia (Fisher) has come into possession of the lightsaber once possessed by her father, Darth Vader.
- Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is a Darth Vader obsessive character.
And as for Abrams returning to to the trilogy later:
“No, I’m not going to direct Episode IX, as much as I am deeply envious of anyone who gets to work with this group of people on the future movies.”
The Empire has morphed into a junta known as The First Order, while X-Wing pilots like Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron now fly for a splinter group known as the Resistance. Princess Leia (Fisher) has come into possession of the lightsaber once possessed by her father, Darth Vader, and later lost by Luke (Hamill) when Vader separated him from his arm during that “join me” duel in The Empire Strikes Back. The amount of screentime the Skywalker twins may get is still unclear, although Luke’s fate is obviously a key factor. Ford’s Han Solo, however, will be one of the leads, piloting the Millennium Falcon alongside his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew.) Among the newcomers, desert scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and runaway stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) will be running for their lives, with the rolling droid BB-8 trying to keep up. Eventually all five of them end up aboard that familiar starship.
