Giant Freakin Robot

The idea of making a new Star Wars movie must be daunting, especially the next chapter, The Force Awakens. This is the first film without franchise creator George Lucas involved and in charge, and it follows the prequels, which, rightly or wrongly (I know there are fans out there), inspire a great deal of hate, so there’s a lot to make up for. And this stress is only amplified when you’ve been a lifelong fan and you don’t want to fuck it up yourself and all the other Star Wars obsessives out there in the world. That’s the situation J.J. Abrams stepped into, and regardless of how you feel about him as a filmmaker (I’m well aware that there are those of you who fall on both sides), it took some stones to accept that job. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t nerve wracking as hell.

Abrams showed up on the red carpet at the National Board of Review, and took a moment to speak to MTV. Notoriously tightlipped as he is about his films, he didn’t actually say anything about The Force Awakens, not that anyone expected him to, but he did talk about the intense pressure. He said:

With The Force Awakens due in theaters at the end of this year, it’s safe to say Star Wars is on a lot of people’s minds right now. For most of us, that just means tracking the steady barrage of rumors and speculation, or maybe rabidly consuming the first wave of the new canon, such as Rebels or the Tarkin novel. Artist George Folz, however, has decided to focus that Star Wars energy in a creative way: he’s going to draw one Star Wars comic per day throughout 2015.

In anticipation of #StarWarsEpisodeVII I'm going to turn one #StarWars scene a day into a comic panel! Here's 1/365 pic.twitter.com/MS2vqNQmil

— George Folz (@GeorgeJurard) January 1, 2015

Now that production has wrapped and we’re less than a year away, it seems strange to just be learning about actors that are going to appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but if this latest bit of news does in fact turn out to be true, it has the potential to be totally badass. Three actors who play significant roles in Gareth Evans’ bonkers action flicks The Raid and The Raid 2 are apparently going to show up in The Force Awakens.

According to Twitch’s sources, the trio of Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, and Cecep Arif Rahman will lend their crazy martial art talents to J.J. Abrams’ upcoming space opera. There’s no word about who they play, if they’re good or evil, or even if we’ll see them in any capacity other than glorified stunt performers. But none of that matters because whatever they’re doing will be awesome, and this is a huge piece of good news for all of you hoping for more practical action rather than CGI composites.

Along with the Clone Wars cartoon, Star Wars Rebels is one of the first projects to fit into the new streamlined Star Wars canon. The show’s producers have often teased that characters and in Rebels may appear or be referenced in the upcoming live action films beginning with The Force Awakens, but that crossover also extends to existing characters turning up in Rebels. We saw Obi-Wan — or at least his hologram — early in the series, but tonight another legendary Jedi will cross paths with the Ghost crew…even if he doesn’t physically appear. Check out Kanan’s close encounter with Jedi Master Yoda below.

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens now less than a year away, that’s obviously been the hot topic of discussion when it comes to Star Wars, but there’s so much else going on. Not only are the Episode movies in the works, but Lucasfilm has a handful of standalone movies on the way as well. At the tail end of December, we heard that the first film could focus on some version of Han Solo and feature Aaron Paul. That, however, was apparently news to the Breaking Bad star.

Even though Paul was linked to the film, and possibly up for one of the leads, there was no word on what his role would be and whether or not he was being considered to play the iconic space rogue. Though he doesn’t really fit the mold, so it’s easy to assume they were talking about another character. The initial report said he was “looking to be attached” to the film, whatever the hell that means, but according to this tweet, that’s not the case:

There aren’t many things in the Star Wars universe quite as divisive as the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Jar Jar Binks is more or less universally reviled, but those furry little buggers from Endor create conflicts that threaten to tear families apart. A lot of people who saw the original trilogy at a young age didn’t have an issue with them early on, but have grown increasingly irritated with them over the years. This video that has been making the rounds shows what that epic space battle at the end of Jedi would look like without constantly cutting away to the action back on the forest moon.

This HD video from Prometheus4vids is indeed rather awesome, but if you’re thinking to yourself that the action will be a little awkward and bumpy without any of the scenes from Endor, you’re definitely right. Not only are many of the jumps where there is originally a cutaway to Han, Leia, and the crew on the surface clunky and awkward with no transition, but there are big narrative leaps as well, like the force field is magically down for no real reason.