Today is May the 4th Be With You Day, and the internet is all abuzz with Star Wars.
Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) gave an interview with The Sun confirming that the original The Force Awakens script began with a floating severed hand holding a lightsaber. It’s an important detail because a plot synopsis for The Force Awakens that leaked prior to the film’s release had this exact detail. It shows that every Star Wars leaked plot deserves at least a little bit of scrutiny.
So far not much is known about Episode VIII. It is directed by Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick) and will be released December 15, 2017. New cast members include Benicio Del Toro, Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran. Everything else about the movie is a black box.
Star Wars: Episode VIII set pictures pic.twitter.com/PEungJckAA
— Star Wars Direct (@StarWarsDirect) April 30, 2016
Real or fake, the following Star Wars Episode VIII “leaks” pulled from from the internet, are at least good reads.
Spoilers:
- Working title is “Echoes of the Dark Side”
- It’s divided into three equally important plot threads that don’t converge until the third act: Rey’s, Finn’s,and Kylo’s.
- Rey is training in the ways of the Force with an old Jedi master (Luke) on a wild planet, while Finn and Poe are in a beautiful city that has a shady, sinister underpinning. Finn and Poe are betrayed and captured by Kylo Ren, who uses them as bait to draw Rey out of hiding so Kylo and Rey can have a duel in an industrial portion of the city.
- The backstory to Luke and his Jedi being wiped out is that Snoke seduced Kylo and a few of the other students to the dark side and tasked them with killing everyone. Luke and a few others survived, including a young Rey who was subsequently dumped on Jakku by Luke.
- Rey’s mom died in the attack.
- Rey is pissed at Luke because she guesses that he was her father and is angry at him for abandoning her. Luke turns to her and says: “No, you are my father.”.
- Yes, really.
- Rey is the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker. Luke went to the first Jedi temple to better understand how the process works. He learned that the spirit of the chosen one is reincarnated by the Force every time the universe is thrown out of balance, which apparently happens on a semi-regular basis. (Anakin was hardly the first time the chosen one reincarnated.) This is why she’s so crazy powerful with the Force (remember that Anakin blew up the Trade Federation donut ship by himself when he was like 8 years old).
- Rey was the product of a virgin birth, but midichlorians aren’t mentioned (Luke says “you are a child of the Force”).
- Luke is hesitant to train her because, according to Jedi history, the chosen one always struggles with staying on the light side of the Force because of the chaotic power running through them. He’s afraid that she could become Vader 2.0. If he trains her to fight Kylo, and she turns dark, she would do way more damage to the galaxy than Kylo could ever dream of doing.
- He ultimately trains her anyway and leaves everything up to the Force. He makes this decision in a scene where he confers with the ghosts of Obi-Wan and Yoda (Ewan MacGregor and Frank Oz come back).
- Rey feels Finn’s distress elsewhere in the galaxy and says she needs to go to him. Luke tells her about the time he felt his friends in distress and Yoda told him to stay and finish his training, and his disobedience led to pain. But then he says he isn’t Yoda, and has his own way of doing things, and tags along with her to go help.
- Finn wakes up on a Resistance cruiser and is told by Poe that they’re already en route to the makeshift Republic homeworld in the wake of the capital planet being blown up by Starkiller Base.
- Leia wants to lobby them to go to war.
- The Republic is being led by an interim dictator named Lord Vikram (Benicio Del Toro), who was quickly put into power by the few senators still around to maintain order.
- Starkiller’s destruction of the Republic core worlds caused a galactic communications disruption because everything was routed through those worlds, so Vikram is trying to reestablish contact and ensure the Republic doesn’t collapse into anarchy.
- Leia and Vikram butt heads. Vikram agrees that the Republic has to go to war with the First Order, but wants to wait for communications to come back online so they can muster up a sizable force (all they have right now is a single small fleet). Leia disagrees, and wants to take the war to the First Order now while Snoke is still reeling from Starkiller’s destruction. She says both sides are in chaos, which makes this an opportune time to strike. Vikram counters by telling her she’s letting her personal emotions over Han’s death get in the way, and Leia throws it back at him by telling him he was always a little snake of a politician when they would argue back in her senate days, etc, etc, they have old bad blood or whatever.
- The Republic planet is safe because it’s protected by a heavy duty shield that can repel any invasion or bombardment from the First Order.
- Finn and Poe are tasked by Leia to investigate the city because one of Leia’s contacts informed her that the First Order have spies embedded in the Republic. Leia suspects Vikram.
- Finn quickly becomes enamored by Leia’s contact, Chala (Kelly Marie Tran), who tags along with him and Poe through the underbelly of the city to gather information.
- Finn and Chala have a flirty romance subplot that involves a nighttime adventure through the rustic old city (this is the second entry in the trilogy after all, and poetry demands it).
- Finn, Poe and Chala all corner the culprit: Vikram’s aide, who has evidence of contact between Vikram and the First Order. Leia and some Resistance fighters confront Vikram and throw him in jail for treason. He denies everything, and the rest of the Republic officials are horrified because Leia basically just coup-de-etat’d the **** out of their leadership. Leia assumes control of the planet’s defenses and absentmindedly puts Finn in charge of the shield codes.
- Finn and Chala have a moment and Finn mentions his confusion about why Vikram didn’t just lower the shields for the First Order. They walk into a room and Phasma is standing there and Chala draws a gun on Finn and forcibly takes the codes for disarming the shield from him. She says she planted the evidence, used Finn to get the codes, and basically that she thinks he’s a dirty traitor to the First Order. In a moment of pure pottery, Phasma makes Finn lower the shields.
- The First Order fleet jumps out of hyperspace and invades the planet, quickly capturing Finn, Poe and Leia. Kylo starts to torture Finn using the Force, knowing that it will draw Rey out of hiding and into his trap.
This next one’s copied from 4chan/v/ and describes the first half of the film.
Star Wars Episode VIII
I am in a position that allows me to know certain details regarding the movie. There have been a lot of “leaks” recently that the crew has found nothing short of hilarious. People have been teasing Daisy Ridley calling her ‘My father’ on set as a joke after the whole bullshit Reddit post which went viral regarding Rey being the reincarnation of Anakin.
Now regarding the movie, here is a bit of information which some of you may find enticing.
– Laura Dern’s character is named Asala Qurd. She is playing the leader of one of the Republic’s military cruisers who were not near the planet that Starkiller blew up. She was a part of the group of politicians and military leaders who believed that the First Order posed no threat, and there is a verbal confrontation between her and Leia in which Dern says ‘ The daughter of Darth Vader has no right to lecture me!’
– Poe Dameron has more screen time and isn’t just in an X-wing like most of TFA.
– Hayden Christenson shot a scene during the nighttime at Pinewood, in which he communicates with both Luke and Rey.
– Kelly Tran is a really cool individual and is a really kind person who can’t act. I have no idea why they cast her in Star Wars. Her characters’ name is Shtala Zi, and is a Resistance contact on the planet that houses Beneicio Del Toro, more on him later. She has a safe-house there and it is seen that Poe knows her from before. Shtala goes out with Finn and Poe on a reconnaissance mission, and just as Finn starts getting attached to her and flirting a bit, The First Order strikes and it is made to seem that she died as she disappears after a huge explosion.
– Yoda also appears to Rey alone, but does speak to Luke without his actual ghost appearing.
– Captain Phasma appears and a gunfight between her squadron and Finn and Poe occurs, with Poe being wounded as he is shot at his wrist. ( I’m not sure but I think they’re going to let his hand be blown off to continue the tradition of a hand being cut off in each episode. )
– Luke explains to Rey the story of Kylo Ren, and how he destroyed everything Luke built after he was corrupted by Snoke. He also speaks of how Han and Ben Solo never really got along, as Ben saw Han as absent from his life. This absence allowed Snoke to really play with his mind.
– Luke mentions Qui-Gon Jin when explaining the light side to Rey.
– No Lando.
– Del Toro is a former bounty hunter and was a leader in the Republic who was not present during the explosion which destroyed the capital. After seeing the devastation, he decides that maybe joining the First Order is his only option and has extremely classified information regarding the Resistance that he plans on giving them in return for immunity. Kylo Ren kills him after Del Toro snickers at Kylo. I have no idea what his name in the movie is.
– Rey is extremely strong with the force but is erratic with it. She tends to tap into the dark side when sparring with Luke which makes him unwilling to train her. Luke has the company of a small animal furry thing on his island, which looks like a cross between a dog, an Ewok and a lizard.
– Leia is wounded in an explosion which prompts Luke to action, Rey also feels a disturbance in the force. They leave on the Falcon to join the rest.
– That’s all I really have. The second half of the third act of the movie is EXTREMELY under wraps. Literally maybe 8 people know what is going down. I asked someone who knows and she told me, “ You’ll wanna wait and see it in a crowded movie theatre.”
