For man, the calendar can’t move fast enough, as the anticipation grows for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." As we already know, it will re-launch the franchise for a new generation, with spinoffs and sequels following forever into eternity, or at least until audiences get sick of it and decide they’re into something else. But that’s not likely to happen for a long time, especially when it seems like Disney and Lucasfilm are eager to, if not completely reinvent, then at least try some new things with the brand.
Chatting with Hero Complex, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan says the directors for each of upcoming movies will be allowed to put their imprint on the material. "These movies will all be so different. [‘Episode VIII’ director] Rian Johnson is a friend of mine — he’s going to make some weird thing. If you’ve seen Rian’s work, you know it’s not going be like anything that’s ever been in ‘Star Wars,’ " Kasdan enthused. "You couldn’t have three more different people than J.J. [Abrams], Rian and [‘Episode IX’ director] Colin [Trevorrow]. Those movies will have the ‘Star Wars’ saga as their basis, but everything else will be different. Then Phil Lord and Chris Miller are going to make the Han Solo film and I can’t guess what that will be like — and I’m writing it!"
Exciting stuff for sure, but let’s take a look back at what could have been. In case you didn’t already known this piece of trivia, Akira Kurosawa fave Toshiro Mifune turned down big roles in the original "Star Wars."
"I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi Wan Kenobi, but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai, on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style," Mika Mifune, the daughter of the actor, said at Tokyo Comic-Con (via THR). "At the time, sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced and he had a lot of samurai pride. So then, there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered, but in the end he turned that down too."
Of course, George Lucas was a big fan of Kurosawa’s films and the Mifune starring "The Hidden Fortress" has long been cited as an influence on "Star Wars." So it’s not a surprise he approached the actor.
Back to ‘The Force Awakens,’ a new TV spot has landed which you can watch below, and R2-D2 and BB-8 have landed on the cover of Time. Lastly, Zachary Feinstein, an engineering professor at Washington University in St. Louis, crunched the numbers on how much both Death Stars would cost. The answer? $419 quintillion. Watch him explain the math below.
