Fang Zei

The studios never do superbowl spots for movies hitting any later than August (the halfway point between superbowls). The Super Bowl ad for Signs comes to mind.

Not gonna happen. Huge waste of money for one thing. We didn't see Super Bowl spots for any of the prequels. A new Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title is so big of a deal that it sells itself.

Tobar said:

Interestingly...the teaser for Attack of the Clones ended up in front of Monsters, Inc.

That was the teaser for the teaser (the "breathing" trailer). The first full trailer was in front of Harry Potter.

I doubt we'll see anything until next May at the earliest. I wouldn't be surprised if Disney attaches it to Tomorrowland just as a little added incentive. Avengers 2 is guaranteed to make bank and doesn't need the help. We'll probably see it officially online earlier that week, though. I feel like studios holding off on uploading trailers until the Monday after is becoming a rare occurrence.

vbangle said:

Harmy said:

So, are you saying that as a BD and media player, it's worse than PS3?

 Just my opinion, but yes, it is worse. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sony has sold a crap load of PS4s so maybe Sony wasn't too far off in their thinking about what the PS4 should be. A gaming console or an entertainment system?...they chose to make it a gaming console.

The ps4 also couldn't play 3D blu-rays, at least not with the initial firmware. I don't get what was so complicated about including a feature on brand-new, 2013 hardware that the ps3 was able to implement in 2010 via firmware using 2006 hardware.

Anyway, looking forward to this release. A quality preservation of the '97 version is something the completionist side of me has wanted ever since reading Bill Hunt's mention of the Euro broadcast preservation in his review of the 2011 official blu-ray.

ThiefCobbler4ever said:

Episode VII title revealed! Get ready for Order of The Jedi!:

http://aggressivecomix.com/?p=22233

Oh, that was amusing to read.

You gotta love it when a website no one's heard of hit-whores like this.

As for legitimate rumors, I'm gonna try and avoid reading them so as to remain unspoiled. I don't want a repeat of the prequels, where I'd spoiled every last thing for myself before actually seeing them. It's gonna be a long 19 months, though.

Excluding the earlier editions of RotJ, yes, they're all canon.

They're not done casting yet.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67125

The difference is that the Star Trek books were never considered canon. Heir to the Empire, on the other hand, was touted as the official continuation of the story.

We never, ever expected them to adapt any of those books into VII-IX. That would've been stupid anyway, "yay, we already know what's gonna happen." But I really don't think it would've been complicated to at least make ST "compatible" with the EU instead of just placing the EU in its own timeline/dimension/whatever.

ETA:

Tobar, that's very cool to read! Could you provide a link or is that from his facebook page or something?

The "maintaining the element of surprise for the audience" is the crucial part of this whole announcement, methinks. We just won't know what exactly Abrams, Kasdan and company are gonna do with this thing until we see that first trailer, although I'm sure many a news leak will happen between now and then.

I look at that photo from the first table reading and I just want to start mapping the EU characters onto the new cast. "Oh, Daisy Ridley is clearly playing Jaina!" I want to exclaim. But then I remember not to get my hopes up.

You gotta wonder if there's gonna be a huge backlash to all of this. As noted earlier in the thread, a lot of fans on fb, tfn and elsewhere are pretty pissed about this already. I can't say I blame them. The money fans spent just on the books published since the early 90's probably totals well over a billion dollars by this point. It's that much less money George would've had to make the prequels with. Indeed, I can't help but see a parrallel with a common complaint we all have about buying the OOT on multiple formats over the decades, one of our greatest justifications for demanding that those versions be restored.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. "But that's a bad comparison. Lucasfilm isn't locking the old books away in a vault like the OOT. They're even reprinting them for the umpteenth time." Yeah, but they're also suddenly and without warning saying "sorry, but those books, retroactively, no longer count as the official continuation of the story even though that's exactly what we said they were. Thank you for the money, though."

Lucasfilm killed off Chewie to move more copies of Vector Prime and now they might be bringing him back just to sell more tickets to Episode VII. I really think they should've had a contingency plan in place. Hell, I thought keeping Han, Luke and Leia alive in the books was the contingency plan.

After spending 20 years chronicling the big three's adventures in print form, I think a return to the big screen owes the fans a little more than just "sorry, but that never happened."

I dunno, maybe I'm overreacting to this. If Episode VII surprises me and ends up a solid film I probably won't care that they've overwritten the post-Jedi EU (if, in fact, that's what they're doing). 

Natalie "I never even saw the original trilogy" Portman

With Mayhew at the first table read, I guess that pretty much seals it. Then again, I really wouldn't put anything past Abrams. He could very well have cast him not as Chewie but in some role as a human.

If the prequels are any indication, we won't know the title until March. Then again, I'm not sure how early Empire and Jedi's titles were revealed.

The most recent news on Lawson was that he wanted more than just a cameo. It's too early to rule him out.

And who knows, JJ's plan might be to mystery box Billy Dee. Nimoy flat out lied about not coming back for Into Darkness. Maybe they're saving Lando for a surprise cameo.

Duke Leto was also in Judge Dredd.

"So you are Dr. Kynes, the judge of the change."

"And the imperial ecologist, sire."

doubleofive said:

So we can keep the other thread on directing.

Speaking of which, we kinda left behind the original Episode VII thread (from before a director had been hired).

From a film theory perspective, this forum is decidedly auteurist ;)

Anyway, it's cool that Gollum and Dr. Kynes / Ming the Merciless will both be in this. Very unexpected as I'm pretty sure they hadn't even been rumored, so someone did a good job of keeping their names under wraps.

As Cobb pointed out, it's cool that Driver and Isaac will be going into outer ... space(!) yet again. Driver had a small role in Lincoln, which, like many of Steven's movies, was produced by Kathleen Kennedy. For all we know, that might've helped him get the role.

Does the absence of Billy Dee's name on this particular list mean he's not in the movie at all?

Also, is everyone on that list even there in that picture??? It's so low-res I had to zoom in before realizing the guy with the ponytail was Mayhew. Is that Tony talking to Mark? Is that Oscar Isaac sitting next to Boyega? Is the guy sitting between Driver and JJ von Sydow, because if it is I barely recognize him at this angle/resolution. There are a couple other dudes, I'm assuming one of them is Gleeson, but whoever the other guy is he's not on the list. Is that Kathy Kennedy sitting between them? What about Kenny?

It's pretty funny seeing Andy Serkis sitting at a meeting for yet another huge sci-fi/fantasy franchise like it's nothing. After LotR, Kong, Apes, and directing 2nd Unit on The Hobbit, he's probably use to this kind of thing.

It's not so much about stuff fitting together as it is about acknowledging "yes, this stuff you loved still happened." They don't have to bring up anything that's happened in the 35+ years since RotJ (in fact, I hope they don't), but the new movie can't make any blatant contradictions like Chewie being alive and still be in the same universe as the "old" EU. It's either one or the other.

Look, I don't mind minor inconsistencies. Star Wars is only slightly older now than Trek was when Enterprise started, and I can still remember being distracted when they played a clip of Zefram Cochrane from after he'd already left for Alpha Centauri.

darklordoftech said:

They wanted to kill Luke, but Lucas wouldn't let them.

Which is exactly why it would be total BS to just throw out the EU now. The big three are still alive in the books. Why else would Lucas be saving them if not to give at least one of them a dramatic death in the ST?

Rumor is that she got the role Lupita Nyongo was rumored for.

I'm going back through all these long months of news stories and it's making my head spin.

First table read is tomorrow. Oscar Isaac is rumored for a role, in addition to a newcomer.

http://badassdigest.com/2014/04/28/star-wars-vii-table-read-tomorrow-heres-whos-rumored-to-show-up/

Indeed it could just be a blanket statement, and if that's the case it doesn't really change anything. All they'd really be saying is that, going forward, everything will be on the same level as everything else. The "legends" thing might simply be a two-level distinction (G-Canon vs non-G-canon) for the layman that doesn't get into the more elaborate multi-tiered heirarchy of canon.

I'm hoping it doesn't mean a nullification of the EU, because as others have said, they'd be overwriting a whole lot of great stories in addition to the less well-recieved stuff.

I must echo what Hal and Tobar and Mr. Cobb have said. We need to wait and see how this all shakes out. For the moment, I'm still taking this news merely as confirmation that the new trilogy won't be an adaptation of any existing EU story. I'm sure I'll be proved wrong, but there ya go.

Tyrphanax said:

There was never any part of me that thought they would just take the existing EU books, comics, and games and just make a movie out of them, or even try to fit the story into the existing EU continuity. 

 I wasn't expecting the former, but I was expecting the latter.

I dunno, I think they should at least try to fit Episode 7 in the "old" continuity. I don't see any scenario as "too constraining" for the filmmakers. If anything, having parameters in which to work might actually breed creativity more than a blank slate would.

One big thing I'm curious about is whether Abrams and Mindel will be shooting some scenes in IMAX like on the last Star Trek movie. Brad Bird and Claudio Miranda are shooting some of Tomorrowland (also from Disney) in the format, just as Bird did with Robert Elswit on Ghost Protocol. I wanna say there was a story about JJ "wanting to," but no confirmation.

A Star Wars movie with scenes in native 15/70 is pretty much the only thing that would get me to see it anywhere other than the Uptown.

Anchorhead said:

I've taken a glance around the nerdosphere since the news release and there are plenty of fans who are put out or upset that the stories they love aren't official anymore. 

Which, as I said in the "EU like" thread, we don't even know LFL is technically saying. All they've said is that VII-IX won't tell the same story as the EU. They might simply be clarifying that this won't be an adaptation of an existing storyline, which we already knew prior to this news.

Then again, the part about "in order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers" certainly seems to imply they don't want continuity to bog them down.

imperialscum said:

As for EU sources that used big-time characters in order to try to increase their popularity they will pay the price now.

Here's the thing, though: they've had 20+ years to kill off Han, Luke and Leia in the EU and they haven't. Also, didn't Chewie's death need to be OK'd by GL himself? That, to me, makes it semi-official.