Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and JJ Abrams just officially announced the Star Wars Episode
VII Cast so I wanted to do a full breakdown as well as address what’s going on with
the story and how they’re basically skipping over all the expanded universe material.
Since we have a cast now too it will be a lot easier to do bonus videos so be sure to
leave me suggestions for anything Star Wars you guys want to talk about and I’ll start
doing more.
If you’re finding me for the first time be sure to subscribe to get everything.
I’ll try to dedicate on day during the week as a Star Wars day going forward.
So let’s start with the big stuff.
Cast breakdown.
These are just the main cast members, there’s going to be an army of creatures and extras
that we’ll find out about eventually.
But starting at the top.
The trinity, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford.
We kind of already knew about them, but there were a lot of rumors as to how they would
be part of the story.
Essentially they’re going to be themselves, they’re not going to be holo recordings.
JJ Abrams actually released a picture of a script read through they all did yesterday.
We can talk about the script in a second.
But we have old Luke, Old Leia and Old Han.
Then There’s Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker in their original roles.
It’s not a party without the originals.
The big news is really the new characters, and even though we know the cast.
We don’t know who they’re playing yet.
So I’ll talk more about characters in a future bonus video.
But we’ve got Andy Serkis, who’s probably playing a creature, hopefully a dark jedi
creature.
Domhnall Gleeson he was Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, Adam Driver who you can
see on HBO’s Girls, Oscar Isaac who has done a bunch of small stuff but you probably
heard about him after Inside Llewyn Davis, Max von Sydow, there’s no way he’s not
playing a villain.
John Boyega who was in Attack of The Block, which was an awesome movie you have to watch.
and Daisy Ridley who’s kind of an unknown.
I’d be willing to bet that Gleeson, Boyega and Ridley are also jedi characters.
Essentially the big teaser is Skywalker children, from Luke and Leia.
But here’s where we need to talk about the story.
It’s not going to look like anything we’ve seen in the expanded universe.
Star Wars made a big announcement last week that essentially said in order to allow maximum
creative freedom to the writers of the new movies.
They would not be including and expanded universe canon.
So bad new good news.
Bad news is, there’s a massive roster of characters that will not be used like Mara
Jade and Star Killer.
They’re not getting rid of the Expanded Universe.
But it will just exist by itself off to the side.
Think of it as like alternate universe stories.
The Good News is mostly that Chewie is dead.
And they have the opportunity to side step any previous issues with stories that didn’t
pan out or were unsuccessful.
So if there was something you didn’t like from the expanded universe.
You don’t have to worry about it.
I think one of my future bonus videos will be about all my favorite Expanded Universe
stories.
There are a lot of good ones.
Timothy Zahn’s Heir to The Empire trilogy essentially re-ignited my passion for Star
Wars in the 90s, when all they were doing was re-releasing VHS tapes every two years.
So let’s have a moment for all those novel and comic book characters that just cried
out.
Disney’s Death Star just silenced them.
So what’s going on with filming right now?
They’ve actually been shooting for a few months.
Nothing with main cast members, mostly just B-Roll and second unit stuff.
Things that don’t require actors to speak.
It’s really funny the way big movies like this get made.
Did you know they start shooting actual scenes with characters before the script is finished.
It’s just so that they can hit their release date.
It used to take almost 3 or 4 years to make a movie this big.
But now because they compartmentalize everything, they can get them out in 2 years.
No one officially knows what the story is, but we did see a picture of an AT-AT foot
on Tatooine.
We also know a few facts, here they are in no particular order:
The new Trilogy will exist inside the George Lucas chronology, the holy trinity will be
in their 60s, pretty close to their real-life age.
Harrison Ford is way older than Mark Hamill, but you get the idea.
Because Luke was in his mid-twenties during Return of The Jedi, we can assume that Episode
VII will pick up about 40 years after the events of the original trilogy.
Not including flashbacks or visions of the future.
We will see most of the major planets featured in the Lucas trilogy, including Coruscant,
Tatooine and Yavin.
They will be sticking to George Lucas Canon.
Which means the Sith rule of two.
and, Disney has already commissioned new novels that are being written inside the new storyline
the movies will draw from.
The novels will fill some of the time gaps between episode 6 and 7.
Three of them are being released this fall starting in November.
The first one is about Grand Moff Tarkin, the second is called Droids in Distress and
ties in with the Rebels cartoon that’s debuting in the fall and the third one is also a Rebels
cartoon tie in called the Inquisitor’s Trap.
I’ll be doing weekly videos for Rebels when it starts airing.
That’s going to be around October.
That series will pick up 5 years before the battle of Yavin.
So I’m going to be doing tons of Star Wars stuff this year, I’m super excited.
So be sure to subscribe to get everything and leave me suggestions for bonus videos.
I’ll try to announce which day will be my dedicated Star Wars Day going forward.
Maybe Monday mornings.
or Tuesday’s when agents of shield goes away.
Right now click here to learn about Captain America 3 and click here to catch up on Agents
of SHIELD.
Cobie Smulders is on tonight’s episode.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!