Now that Disney, Lucasfilm and everyone involved in Star Wars: The Force Awakens have rounded a corner onto the final straight, the cast and crew are beginning to talk in retrospect about crafting the bold new chapter in the galactic series. Not only have these been peppered in between the eye-popping TV spot and character posters coming out of Episode VII, but they’ve also given budding fans a better understanding of the filmmaking process behind the scenes, and how J.J. Abrams steered the new installment in what we hope to be the right direction.
And so, only a few weeks after Harrison Ford and Gwendoline Christie sung The Force Awakens‘ praises from different angles, Wired has published a bevy of new images that take you behind the scenes of Abrams’ sci-fi.
[zerg]While a handful of the stills are overly familiar – the isolating shot of Finn in the desert, for instance – there’s some truly fantastic new ones. Chief among those is arguably the director himself giving some last-minute instructions to a suited-up Stormtropper, while there’s also a cameo by a very weathered and rusty looking R2D2. Could this be an indication of the droid’s wayward journey with one Luke Skywalker? He was seen alongside him in the second teaser, after all.
Welcoming an array of newcomers to the fold – specifically Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver as the nefarious, power-mongering Kylo Ren – Star Wars: The Force Awakens is very much an overhaul of the series. That doesn’t mean that Lucasfilm hasn’t retained some core story strands, however, with the remnants of the Resistance once again left scrambling to destroy a very Death Star-esque planet killer.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18. Until then, you can gaze longingly at the photos included above and look forward to the documentary that Disney will likely release about its creation.
