Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One Is A Prequel

This weekend during Star Wars Celebration, a panel was held to discuss Rogue One. It is still in the movie's development cycle but Gareth Edwards (director) did drop a few tidbits of information. To start the new official title is "Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One" with Anthology added to differentiate the movies from the upcoming trilogy of films.

One of the most important bits finally provides a little insight on what the movie is about. The official synopsis "A band of resistance fighters unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans in Star Wars anthology film, Rogue One.” This places the movie just before the beginning of the very first Star Wars film. The one known cast member, Felicity Jones, will play one of the rebels that steals the plans. Because of when it is set that means all the Jedi are considered extinct (except for the random few that will probably pop up as various movies, cartoons, and books need them too) so it will focus on characters without any power sets.

The last bit is the genre of the film. On the surface it sounds like a heist movie but apparently Edwards inspirations for the film are military in nature such as Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty where its a few against many and the potentially amoral decisions that must be made to survive and complete the mission. The image to the right is test concept footage that was shown during the panel.

Star Wars Celebration Live Stream Recordings

Below are days 2-4 of Star Wars Celebration that ran this weekend in Anaheim, CA. News wise the only main revelation was about Rogue One (next post) but still below is lots to see from the floor and the various panels that ran throughout the weekend. To bad SDCC doesn't do something like this with their panels.

Star Wars The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer #2

Today kicked off Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, CA. JJ Abrams and producer essentially kicked the whole thing off by appearing at a panel to talk about the movie and reveal the second teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Per Abrams SOP the secrets remains tightly locked down but you do see enough to get that the movie is attempting to re-capture the look and feel of the the very first Star Wars movie including analogs of almost all of the same elements (for good or bad is too soon to say). Below is the teaser and then links to more info.


Now that you have seen the teaser, what does it all mean? Beats me as the Abrams cone of silence remains in full effect but the speculation remains. i09.com has an excellent breakdown with screenshots that at least lets you figure how who is who in some of the scenes since there are a lot of new characters. Probably like most fans the best part of Vader's destroyed helmet which somehow survived going down the chute of the Death Star along with Vader's saber being handed off to another (even though that saber was lost with Luke's hand in The Empire Strikes Back). Hopefully all these returned tidbits pay off and not in the "Superman Returns" homage overkill manner.

A few behind the scenes shots have also been released including the new trio of heroes which you can find here. More screenshots from the teaser is here.

Star Wars Celebration JJ Abrams Panel and Day 1 Live Stream

This weekend is Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, CA. Since Star Wars: The Force Awakens is due this December it probably comes to no surprise that JJ Abrams was on hand to fly the flag for the movie. Below is video of his panel as he talks about the movie while keeping the secret revealing to a minimum. The panel starts at the 31:41 point. If don't have time to watch the video, AVClub.com has a time frame breakdown of it and io9.com has all the important highlights. The second video is the Day 1 Live Stream from the convention floor and various panels that die hard fans should probably watch but most casual fans will likely be bored by.