Star Wars Bits: Episode VII Films In Ireland, Harrison Ford Walking Again Plus Rebels And EU

Star Wars Episode VII, specifically the filming of it, is the focus of this edition of Star Wars Bits. Below, read about the following.

After breaking his leg and walking around on a crutch, Star Wars Episode VII star Harrison Ford was spotted in Los Angeles walking around without it recently. He has a slight limp but told TMZ in this video that he'll be going back to work pretty soon. You can see photos at Star Wars 7 News.

Over the past few days, J.J. Abrams has been filming on the Irish island of Skellig Michael. Mark Hamill and Daisy Ridley were both confirmed to be on set and Getty Images are among the companies who have been able to snap photos of the cast and crew going to and from the location. It's a rustic, beautifully green location, so this sounds like a pretty important scene, especially since its the first we've seen Hamill actually shooting the film. A BBC report says it's only a one minute scene but you can read and see more at all of those above links.

Plus, friend of /Film Roya Lackey just happened to be in the area and snapped these exclusive pics of how the local businesses are capitalizing on the new found fame:

Talking to the Wall Street Journal, J.J. Abrams spoke about the preservation of film, which he's using on Star Wars Episode VII. Here's a snippet:

Especially on movies like "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," you have so much that will be created or extended digitally, and it's a slippery slope where you can get lost in a world of synthetic. You really have to keep away from that, especially with "Star Wars," which I wanted very much to feel like it is part of another era.

We know from a while back that the Star Wars Expanded Universe is no longer canon. That's not to say the movies and books can't borrow from it but what happened then is no longer what happened. Speaking to Screenrant though, the Editor at Large at Del Rey, Shelly Shapiro, said the following:

Well first of all, we don't want to just disappear stuff that everybody read and loved – including myself. Legends are things that are often told over generations so they're not... they change constantly with the telling, so you can't actually attribute an author to any particular one. Often it wasn't someone who was actually there. You can go back to any of the legends... they're pretty sure there was a 'King Arthur,' but most of the stories probably did not happen. But that doesn't mean there aren't kernels of truth in it.

Even though they would no longer be part of a Star Wars official history, they're still stories that mean something, and they can mean something to you, even if they didn't 'happen.' That they are legends. And legends are big, and legends are exciting, and legends are special, and you can read them, and tell them, and love them. And then we also read history, and we retell that, and love it, and that gets retold until it's a legend too.

So that's why we called it Legends... So it wouldn't get shoved off too far to the side, and treated like it never happened.

Speaking of Comic-Con, here's the full Star Wars Rebels panel via The Star Wars Underworld:

Read more about what Star Wars Rebels brought to Comic-Con here.

Finally, Episode VII star John Boyega may or may not be shooting the film today but, if he is, he's channelling Spider-Man. Check out this Instagram image. And here's his co-star watching the film: