Rian Johnson And Adam Driver Talk “Star Wars”

Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars with the film still over a year away from hitting screens. The last week has seen a surprising amount of news break all of which can be seen here.
Now the man who will be tasked with taking over from J.J. Abrams has broken his silence about the challenges he faces when he begins work on his own Star Wars movie.

Rian Johnson(Looper) will both write and direct the second part of the upcoming trilogy has spoken about the expectation of taking on such an enormous franchise.

“The most surprising thing is just how not scary and how much fun … It’s boring to talk about because the only thing I can really say is I’m just happy. But I don’t have the terror that I kind of expected I would, at least not yet. I’m sure I will at some point.

Like if there’d been no Star Wars movies since Return of the Jedi, there’d be a lot more pressure, but the fact we’ve had them, we’ve had the prequels, we’ve had the TV shows, we’ve had Angry Birds Star Wars … I play it all the time!”

Johnson also admitted that he had visited the set of Episode VII, and was impressed with the amount of practical effects on show.

“They’re doing so much practical building for this one. It’s awesome. They’re doing it all right, yeah … I think people are coming back around to [practical effects], yeah, it feels like there is sort of that gravity pulling us back towards it.
I think that more and more people are hitting kind of a critical mass in terms of the CG-driven action scene lending itself to a very specific type of action scene, where physics go out the window and it becomes so big so quick.
I probably sound like a grumpy old man talking about it, but the thing is, I do wonder because I think kids are growing up watching those and that’s the thing that they love now so I don’t know whether it is a generational thing, and it could be.”

Another man who has been speaking about the highly anticipated film is star Adam Driver. Rumoured to be playing the villain in Star Wars: Episode VII. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Driver revealed he’s currently not filming any scenes for the film and resumes his shooting commitments around “mid-November, end of December”.

Playing his cards close to his chest the 30year old star of the series ‘Girls’ would unsurprisingly given the recent set leaks, only speak of the movies in general terms.

“Doing Star Wars now – that’s surreal. I feel like that even with this cast. You start by try[ing] to stamp [that feeling] down as much as possible, just focus on what it is that you are there to do… Easier said than done.
The thing about Star Wars that’s so good – sure there’s this huge [canvas]. It’s space, it’s a long time ago in a galaxy far away. That’s set up immediately. But in the midst of all those things, what has made those movies last so long is that they’re all grounded, which is something that is not so far off from every movie with huge universal themes of siblings and parents and betrayal and trust. That’s so generic and obvious, but it’s hard to balance those things.

When you break all of those things down, really it’s just because someone wasn’t loved enough or felt betrayed. That’s what makes those movies so universal. I think they can get in your mind in big and sweeping ways.

I always think back to the original movies and to those quieter moments where Luke is out in A New Hope, and there are the two suns setting, and it’s just such a quiet moment. It is the equivalent, basically, of a farm boy dying to get out of his small town and do something bigger. It’s those kinds of universal themes that ground this whole thing in space.

How great is that to get to work on something that has so much humanity in the midst of it? I feel like that’s everyone’s goal, to balance those two. Again, surreal seems to be the word of this interview. It’s exciting to get that to be part of your life. Now you have to contribute something to it – and that’s not something you, personally, or anyone on set takes lightly. I feel like everybody wants to make it good.

Friendship, I feel, is something that maybe isn’t investigated as much – or maybe I’m not watching those movies. It was such a huge part of the original three. “I’m going to go save my friend.” Everyone was going to go bail their friends out. “I can’t do this because my friends, everything is at stake because of my friends. I gotta go back. … Yoda, I gotta leave, whatever… I gotta leave. [Laughs]”.”

Star Wars: Episode VII will hit cinema’s on 18 December 2015

Source: Dark Horizons