Confirmed: 'Star Wars: Episode VIII' Begins Immediately After 'The Force Awakens' Ends
Exactly two weeks ago, production on Star Wars: Episode VIII began across the pond. An video accompanied the announcement with some footage from the set, showing a couple characters in a scene that looked very familiar to the final shot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Many wondered if this meant that the film would be the first Star Wars movie where a large chunk of time hadn't passed in between movies, and now we have our answer. Find out what a certain Star Wars star said about the Star Wars Episode VIII opening, but beware of spoilers if you somehow haven't seen The Force Awakens yet.
Daisy Ridley hit the red carpet at the 88th Academy Awards last night (find out who took home awards right here), and she stopped to have a quick chat with MTV about production on Star Wars: Episode VIII. The aforementioned announcement showed Ridley in the scene with Mark Hamill where she meets him on a mysterious island and holds out his old lightsaber for him to take. In the brief conversation, she confirmed what many had suspected about the scene in question:
Me and Mark [Hamill] have been rehearsing a lot, and it's really amazing. When we went back to Skellig to do the opening of VIII, it was so crazy doing the same scene with a different crew of people. He's amazing to rehearse with, and I'm very excited to be doing the rest of the stuff.
As Ridley says, they're doing the same scene with a different crew of people, which means we're picking up right where The Force Awakens left off. Some had previously been skeptical that the footage we saw in the announcement video was actually new, thinking that maybe it was just behind the scenes footage from The Force Awakens. But Lucasfilm Creative Executive Pablo Hidalgo put the kibosh on that dumb theory by calling attention to director Rian Johnson:
And the good news is, Episode VIII will have much more Luke Skywalker. Or at the very least, he'll be doing much more than just staring at Rey with a look of hesitation and worry. Ridley added, "It's such a good story. Seriously. Luke is so cool in this one. Really."
The biggest questions for fans, perhaps besides the identity of Rey's parents, are exactly what Luke Skywalker has been up to this whole time, what's his state of mind, and will he be resistant to his call back to action in the face of a new evil. In the roughly 30 years since Return of the Jedi, has he grown stronger?
In the original trilogy, Luke's powers progressed quite a bit between movies. He went from knowing nothing about the Force in A New Hope to using it to grab his lightsaber from the wampa cave at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. Then he went from being too full of anger and emotion in The Empire Strikes Back to being much more composed and even a bit cocky about his powers in Return of the Jedi. So who knows how we'll find Luke in Star Wars: Episode VIII.
Even though this is a change from storytelling tradition, as long as it serves the narrative well, then it's nothing to get bent out of shape about. Personally, I think it'll be interesting to see if this new trilogy spans a much shorter amount of time in the grand scheme of the Star Wars saga. How about you?