Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Guys... a new Star Wars movie is coming out!

This month!

The first in the Sequel Trilogy!

With Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher all coming back, it's really happening!

 

And that's probably my cue to go dark on this thread, for really reals this time. See you all on December 18th whenever the forums are actually up after TFA comes up.

 

I'm seeing it on the 16th, actually.

 

Since you're spoiler-free I won't go into detail, but that probably doesn't matter in this case:

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No, we don't. The TFA rumors have been mostly silent on that. The assumption seems to be the New Republic. Unless someone else is a aware of some specific spoiler I've overlooked, which is possible because they seem to be everywhere these days.

 

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So, on Jimmy Fallon's show, J.J. Abrams revealed that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the guy behind Hamilton (which I am currently obsessed with, being just as much a history nerd as I am a Star Wars geek...) helped him write "cantina music" for The Force Awakens.

Awesomeness.

 

I think you need a little re-education about Duros.

Sarcastic as you are being, I am not:

So I was chatting to a woman at work, who did not know a new Star Wars film was coming out later this month.

No, she isn't 80 years old, and no, she's not a complete backwards weirdo, she's just a mum whose focus right now is on her small daughter, and who had genuinely not got a clue that there was a new film coming out. She was actually disappointed that she'd not seen any ads on television, or posters, or... anything. I found that both surprising and depressing, as I thought this is meant to be a big, huge, mainstream thing with all these TV ads, but... this side of the Pond, I guess unless you're following all that online digital stuff, you apparently don't have a clue there's a Star Wars film coming out...

I felt sorry and showed her the trailer-- which she loved, and said she'll be sure to see it on DVD when it comes out-- but... yeah, just one of those moments which make you stop and realise that the PR machine isn't as all reaching as it makes the rest of us think... I guess she might have seen the toys in the stores, but... I guess there's always been Star Wars toys in stores, so they must not have jumped out at her as special...

 

Did we know who was doing the novelization? I somehow missed this.

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Also, some scamp on Reddit took a map from one of the Journey to the Force Awakens books and overlaid it with one from the Essential Atlas. If he's right, Starkiller Base might have a meaningful location.

Spoiler

 

If that map overlay isn't in any way deliberately fiddled with, then... the coincidence is waaaaay too much of a coincidence.

Of course, with the way Abrams is, that could be exactly the point.

 

Yeah, they announced Foster at one of the conventions. He was in the audience for the QandA, and asked if he could write the novelization. They discussed among themselves and then said "sure." And then everyone realized it was /Alan Dean Foster./

 

Dude provided the original map:

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The more I think about that map...

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The more it actually does seem it's probably right. Ilum was featured quite a lot in The Clone Wars, so it's not totally alien to the canonverse, and maybe it won't be that Starkiller base was built there, but that they choose Ilum as one of their first locations to blow up, seeing it as a source of Jedi power, lightsabers, blah, blah, and a good place to think Luke might be hiding and to nuke first as a test case, or whatever.

 

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Or maybe Starkiller Base is Illum!

They're both snowy planets, and it would make sense to convert an old planet, than construct an artificical one.

It also cuts off the supply of Kyber Crystals.

 

Speaking of...

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Kyber crystals

...you've just reminded me that I think the new canon established somewhere that those were used...

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...in the construction of the Death Star's superlaser, I think?

If I'm not totally making that factoid up and I am remembering it from somewhere, then the coordinates do make sense.

 

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Yeah, you're right, it was revealed in TCW that giant Kyber Crystals were used for the Death Star Laser.

So it would make even more sense for the base to me Illum!

 

And, considering who is doing the novelization, Kyber Crystals make a certain amount of sense....

 

Here are my thoughts on the "map theory":

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I buy it for two reasons.

One, so far, and from what Jason Fry and other authors have said, they seem to be taking the basic geography of the galaxy established in the old EU and keeping it identical, the same with the rest of the "framework" of the universe like companies, ships, alien species, etc. So there's no real reason they'd do something like this and have it be different than it's been before.

Two, I 100% doubt that Abrams or Kasdan have watched anything of The Clone Wars or based anything in the movie on it. But I can absolutely buy the fact that someone at Lucasbooks decided "The movie has Starkiller Base be built out of a distant ice planet, [maybe the movie says its weapon is a giant lightsaber or something], we have Ilum, let's combine it." It seems like they've already done something similar with establishing Constable Zuvio as a Kyuzo with bad eyesight or whatever. Or like how the original Clone Wars combined the movie idea of an alien banking species called the Muun with the EU banking planet Muunilinst.

 

I actually wasn't being sarcastic, it's just unbelievable that we're now in the Release Month for a movie most of us had given up on ever happening, it's exciting!


But yeah, I haven't seen any TV ads (except on Facebook), or anything in the stores I go to like CVS or Walgreen's. Which worries me a little.

 

I live on a college campus. They decorated the school bookstore with BB's. There are BB's in the school colors.

 

BB-8s, you mean?

 

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Why would they blow up an ice planet filled with Kyber crystals and then take another ice planet from roughly the same location as in the EU and fill it with Kyber crystals as a weapon?

 

New Kylo Ren-centric ad with more Snoke dialogue. I imagine Kylo is stamping his foot when he says "I'll show them!" Someone's been watching too much Space Balls.

Don't make me get on your case the next time you say R2.

 

Artoo is used in the film's though, and nobody will get confused and think I'm talking about guns or basketball when I use that name.

 

With the leak of the entire shot list, I am out of the spoiler game. Too much for even me.