Squeaky Mouse Droid: The Force Awakens’ Villain
Nothing makes a good film great like a great villain, and for Star Wars fans biting at the bit to know what this new film, The Force Awakens, is actually about, it might seem that director JJ Abrams and the marketing team at Lucasfilm are the ones that are have gone to the Dark Side: they’ve made it clear that the fans will have to wait a bit longer for the first full trailer for this film. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice got a meaty three and a half minute story-based trailer close to seven months out from it’s release date, while Star Wars is less than four months away from it’s release date, and they are still holding back. True, two teaser trailers have been released, but with the D23 convention convention on the horizon and the film itself only a few months out, many fans expected a full trailer by now.
Lucasfilm is holding back a bit, waiting until the fall to drop that trailer. Be sure to look for a complete breakdown of that trailer by your friendly neighborhood Squeaky Mouse Droid when it does drop. Think about this: there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out. It’s kind of surreal.
As it turns out, JJ Abrams, and Lucasfilm haven’t really gone to the Dark Side: just because they’re not quite ready to give us a trailer doesn’t mean they are not ready to give us something.
Actually, they just gave us a lot: Entertainment Weekly was able to interview JJ. Abrams about the new film, and, to go along with that interview, a bunch of new images have dropped.
What’s so interesting about the interview with JJ Abrams was how he gave us a bit more to go on with the film’s new villain, Kylo Ren, who was seen in the teaser trailers wielding a unique cross-blade lightsaber. So the common question among fans was “who is this guy?”
Of course, JJ has a way of actually raising more questions with each answer he seems to give, and, as a result, the information we are given about Kylo Ren’s background actually adds to the mystery.
Kylo Ren is, in many ways, the inverse of the Luke Skywalker character in that he is someone who came up from essentially nothing before reaching a level of prominence and respect in the galaxy. Luke started as a farm-boy on a remote planet in the galaxy before becoming a key player in the Rebellion and then becoming the last of the Jedi Knights. Kylo Ren’s background is that he also came form no means, rising up from relative obscurity before gaining some prominence with the First Order who has been able to cause real change (in essence, upheaval) in the galaxy. In the first teaser trailer, we see him stagger ungracefully through the woods, wielding a lightsaber he no doubt crafted himself, perhaps after years of studying the legends of what came before. Abrams hinted that Kylo Ren has been obsessed with Darth Vader. In essence, it’s easy to imagine that Kylo Ren sees himself as much as a hero as Luke had in the original films.
Abrams also insinuated that Kylo Ren is not is real name. His birth-name is a secret (though the true Star Wars fans probably have already figured it out) and Ren is actually not a name at all; it instead represents an order of knights. Maybe the galaxy has splintered such that the Jedi and the Sith are no longer the only ones who have been able to hone the Force.
According to the interview, Abrams took on the first chapter of the new trilogy when producer Kathleen Kennedy asked him a simple question: Who is Luke Skywalker? Luke might seem to be in all ways a typical hero, but he had to essentially taste the Dark Side in order to beat Darth Vader, and he realized not too soon that he had to pull back or he would have continued down that path into the Dark Side. When slicing off Vader’s hand, he had seen a glimpse of what he could become. Needless to say that Luke was a very different man at the end of the original films than he was at the beginning, and it stands to reason that he would be very different thirty years later. Abrams was given the chance to explore just where this iconic character would go, even if that only meant planting the seeds of that story in the first episode of the new trilogy.
Beginning the first week of September, as the new line of action figures will drop at that time, specifics about the Force Awakens will come thick and fast, and, as you can see below, pictures from the upcoming production, Rogue One have already surfaced. The mythology that is Star Wars has reawakened in grand style, and all of this anticipation – all of this mystery – is part of what makes it so fascinating.
