Major Spoilers for The Force Awakens and Rogue One to Follow!!!
Over the weekend Star Wars Celebration was going on in Orlando and obviously this was a big weekend for me for a lot of reasons but the main one was the reveal of The Last Jedi trailer. There was a lot to cover but I’ll mainly be focusing on The Last Jedi and Star Wars Battlefront II. I won’t be talking much about Rebels because I’m not caught up with Season 3 just yet but that being said, Season 4 looks great and I think it will be a fantastic finale for this series.
Star Wars Battlefront II
This year will see the release of Star Wars Battlefront II, EA and Dice are trying to do better than their previous outing in the Star Wars franchise which was panned by critics and fans alike for various problems. While it looked and sounded absolutely phenomenal it was plagued by a lack of content, few planet choices, no space battles, no clone wars, and little to no single player experience. Add all of this plus the fact that the only way to get more content was to pay $50-$60 dollars for the Downloadable Content…A good amount of people were very upset about this game. I waited until The season pass went on Sale after Rogue One came out and finally got it and the entire game felt full and satisfactory but it was only after I bought the extra content. I’m hoping that they’ve learned from their first mistakes and fix most of the issues.
The first trailer revealed the addition of Space Battles, the addition of all eras of the films including the Prequels and The Force Awakens and a very intense Single Player Campaign from the look of it. They’ve announced that different parts of the studio will be handling different aspects of the game which makes a lot of sense for one group to focus on the campaign, one to focus on the ground battles and one to focus on the space battles.
From what I can gather from the trailer and EA’s Website, The Campaign will focus on Iden Versio, The Commander of Inferno Squad and will open on Endor during the destruction of the second Death Star and will continue through various battles leading up to The Force Awakens.
They’ve also said that they’re adding a class system similar to the Battlefield games and I think that’ll work a lot better than Star Cards or pick-ups.
I have a lot of hopes for this game and everything sounds great and I hope they can stick the landing. I will be pre-ordering the deluxe edition soon…mainly just to make sure I get The Last Jedi versions of Kylo Ren and Rey.
Forces Of Destiny
Forces Of Destiny is a new youtube miniseries that’s going to focus on the great female characters of Star Wars such as Leia, Rey, Ashoka and the rest. It’s been announced that pretty much everyone from the Cartoons and Films are reprising their roles for the series which is gonna be great. It’ll start sometime this summer and I fully intend to share all of the episodes on here and our Facebook page.
Below is a picture of the dolls they’re releasing for the series. Sabine looks a little wonky and Jyn looks the most accurate but I need that Rey and BB-8 in my life.
Captain Phasma
Phasma is officially getting her own comic which will bridge the gap between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. I’m incredibly excited about this for the main reason that the lack of Captain Phasma in Force Awakens was my only complaint about the film. It seemed like a wasted opportunity but between this comic and her addition in The Last Jedi trailer I hope that we’ll get to know a lot more about Phasma.
Personally, I think it’d be awesome if she was revealed as one of the Knights of Ren…I doubt it will happen but it would be pretty awesome if it was true.
The Last Jedi
Whoa, now I’ve discussed this trailer with a lot of different people and this is what I’ve come up with :
1. This trailer is very Luke heavy and that’s perfectly fine by me. He has the first lines spoken and I think that it’s an important piece of Dialogue from both the standpoints of story as well as meta-textual, remember that the very first line of The Force Awakens was “This will begin to make things right.” Which once again worked within the context of the story and the idea that these films will be much better than…certain things that have come before. Dialogue is very important in these films and a perfect example of that is “Breathe, just Breathe. Reach out. What do you see?” See, with The Force Awakens we were just now getting back into Star Wars but now we’ve had time to process the return and now we get to focus on a brand new story.
2. The next thing we see is a Resistance control room, presumably with Leia running things like she does, Rey says she sees Light. Then we see Kylo Ren’s broken mask, Rey says she see’s Darkness. Then we see what looks to be an old school Jedi altar, it basically looks like something from the Mortis trilogy in The Clone Wars or from the Bendu in Rebels which I think is awesome. I love that they’ve focused on building up the force in this trailer. I really think we’re gonna see some new stuff like we did with Kylo Ren holding the blaster bolt and using telepathy.
3. Then we see some really quick hits featuring a new speeder squadron going to charge against AT-AT’s, we see Finn in recovery after his duel with Kylo Ren, we see Poe and BB-8 running through a hall just as Poe’s X-Wing explodes…which broke my heart cause I love his X-Wing and we see a space battle towards the end of this part which is going to be great but the key element of this part is 3 very quick scenes, a close up of Kylo Ren holding his lightsaber out amid a firey backdrop, a building burning in the distance as a man falls to his knees next to R2-D2 and Captain Phasma leading a group of Stormtroopers through a firey hallway. I think that all three of these scenes are done as a flashback sequence to reveal the truth behind Ben Solo’s transformation into Kylo Ren and the destruction of Luke’s Jedi Academy. Notice that this is his original Tri-Saber even though his original lightsaber was destroyed in his duel against Rey and she also scarred his face and it does look like he might have one but it’s kinda hard to tell. There have been Rumors that we’ll see him build his new Lightsaber in this film which would be a great and emotional scene to see him make that rite of passage and it would also work in perfect juxtaposition to Rey making her own lightsaber instead of using Luke’s. Although the lightsaber building is only rumored for the two characters it would be a really cool scene to see from both perspectives.
4. The final point behind this entire trailer hinges on that final scene where we see the silhouette of Luke and he says “I only know one truth, it’s time for the Jedi to end.”
Let’s dissect his Dialogue here for a bit : After Rey says what she sees, he tells her “It’s so much bigger.” and then at the end he says “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” That’s some really heavy stuff coming from him. See, my biggest question after The Force Awakens was “Why would Luke not be there? Why would he allow all of this to happen without his guiding hand to stop the first order?” Well what if everything he believed was undone? What if he realized that the Jedi and Sith weren’t the only two groups to use the force? Let’s go over this list of Force Users : Snoke, Kylo Ren, Maz Kanata, Chirrut Imwe, The Bendu, The Mortis Family, The Nightsisters and The Inquisitors. All of these characters use the force in some way and none of them identify as Jedi or Sith. I think the ultimate point of the Last Jedi is that Luke is the Last Jedi and he wants Rey to be something better. The Jedi served their purpose and their time has passed, I don’t think Luke is turning evil and I don’t think that he’s just a grey Jedi. I think that Luke has realized that the Jedi were the reason that Anakin turned to the dark side and I think that Yoda was being prophetic when he said “When gone am I, the last of the Jedi you will be.” I really like the idea of Rey being something new.
Also, this is what I think Snoke is. A new player from a new teaching of the dark side that we haven’t seen. He never claims to be a sith and neither does Kylo and that is very telling to me as a writer and as a fan…and I think Luke is actually searching for the answers behind the beginning of the force and where it split off besides the Jedi and The Sith.
5. My final point of the trailer is this : This film will not be what we expected by any means and I’m totally Ok with that. Rogue One already proved that Disney and Lucasfilm can make a darker Star Wars film without hurting the source material and I think The Last Jedi will be a darker film as well. It’s like I always said, The Force Awakens can be nostalgic for the classical feel so The Last Jedi can be something different entirely. Luke is my favorite character and I can’t wait to see what he’s been up to and just how powerful he’s become.
