What We Want To See From The Star Wars: Episode IX Trailer

What We Want To See From The Star Wars: Episode IX Trailer

It has been roughly 1 year and 4 months since Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the last film in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, hit theaters. In all that time we have yet to see so much as a single frame from the next and final film in the trilogy, J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX. Fortunately, that long wait will soon be at an end.

Star Wars Celebration begins this week in Chicago, and with a Star Wars: Episode IX panel featuring director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy scheduled for Friday, April 12, the prevailing wisdom and expectation is that is when we will finally get the trailer for the film. A trailer for a new Star Wars film would be eagerly anticipated regardless, but this one has even more riding on it.

This trailer, which is for the final movie in the Skywalker Saga, comes after the bumpy patch of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Those factors mean that this trailer has to deliver. So what do we want from the Star Wars: Episode IX trailer to make it worth the wait? Here are a few things we’d like to see.

A Title

This one is obvious and pretty much a given (how weird would it be if we got a trailer but no full title?) but that doesn’t diminish the fact that we want to know what this movie is called. This will be the latest we have found out the title of any movie in the Sequel Trilogy and while the title doesn’t matter insofar as the quality of the film is concerned, on a macro level, it is important. This is the end of the Skywalker Saga and an over 40-year journey, the concluding chapter title is more than a point of speculation. It should have weight and meaning and sound cool.

In our long wait for the title reveal, there have been a ton of rumored and potential contenders thrown out there, from Son of Darkness and The New Order to Balance of the Force and Skywalkers. We’ll soon find out if any of these guesses were right. I expect that this title reveal will be done as it was for Avengers 4, with the title being revealed at the end of the trailer. If it’s a banger, it will be a heck of a way to close out the first trailer for Star Wars: Episode IX and send fans into a frenzy.

The Knights Of Ren

Glimpsed in the first full trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Rey’s lightsaber vision in the film) and talked about in both Episode VII and Episode VIII, we still have yet to see the enigmatic Knights of Ren in person in the sequel trilogy. Rumors have indicated that Kylo Ren’s coterie of force-wielders will finally show up in Star Wars: Episode IX and if that’s true, they need to be in the trailer.

At this point, the villains are just Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, General Hux, and a bunch of faceless First Order soldiers. The Star Wars: Episode IX trailer could up the stakes and the threat level in a major way by giving us a group of badass darksiders showcasing some serious skills and powers or doing something menacing. J.J. Abrams introduced the idea of the Knights of Ren all the way back in 2015’s The Force Awakens, its time to finally deliver and that should happen starting with the Episode IX trailer.

The Original Trilogy Characters

In the official Star Wars: Episode IX casting announcement, Lucasfilm let us know that Mark Hamill would be reprising his role as Luke Skywalker, Billy Dee Williams would be returning to the franchise as Lando Calrissian, and the late Carrie Fisher would appear as Leia Organa thanks to unused footage from the previous two films. Although the focus of this film will likely be on the new characters like Rey, Finn, and Kylo, the trailer for Episode IX, the end of the Skywalker Saga, should honor its history by showing these Original Trilogy characters.

Lucasfilm made the bold decision to reveal that Luke Skywalker would be back (in some form) in Episode IX, choosing not to keep it a secret despite his death in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. With Luke returning being public knowledge, we should see him in the trailer. With regards to Leia, without knowing how much footage they had to work with, I wouldn’t want too much revealed ahead of time, but just a shot or two would be enough. And Donald Glover’s Lando stole the show in the Solo trailers, and just seeing Billy Dee Williams as Lando again in the Episode IX trailer would be great.

Lightsaber Moments

There are few inventions in fiction as cool and beloved as the lightsaber, and seeing an awesome lightsaber ignite or some signature lightsaber combat is a great way to have people freaking out over a trailer. Just think back to the trailer for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace when you saw Darth Maul whip out a double-bladed lightsaber or in the teaser for The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren pulled his jagged crossguard lightsaber. The trailer for Episode IX should have a similar ‘Holy Shit!’ lightsaber moment.

I know Rey’s/Anakin’s blue saber is/was broken and I’m not saying we need to see a new kind of lightsaber in the trailer, but it feels like we do need to see some kind of lightsaber moment that surprises you and has you pumping your fist. The Last Jedi didn’t feature any lightsaber on lightsaber battles but I hope and expect J.J. Abrams to give us plenty of that in this film. If we could see some of that in the trailer it would help get everyone back on board with this saga and hyped about this film.

The New Characters

Star Wars: Episode IX may be the last film in this trilogy and the Skywalker Saga at large, but there are still new faces that will be introduced. Richard E. Grant, Keri Russell, Dominic Monaghan, and Naomi Ackie are all joining the cast in roles that are yet to be officially revealed. There is also still something of an open question whether or not Matt Smith is in this movie. Exciting new characters interacting with our faves and doing cool things is a good way to build the hype for the film and hopefully the Episode IX trailer does just that by showing them.

That said, there is a caveat to this wish list item; if any of the new characters or their roles in the film are meant to be a surprise, like Yoda in The Last Jedi, I’m fine with omitting them from the trailer, as I don’t think any of us want major plot beats spoiled. But we should be able to see at least some of these new characters in the trailer, if only enough to whet our appetites and give us something to speculate over until December.

An Idea Of The Story

Generally speaking, I’m a huge advocate of trailers that go light on plot details and heavy on establishing the tone of a film, and while that latter part is also important, I think that the first trailer for Star Wars: Episode IX needs to really give us an idea of what the story is. This isn’t a teaser that’s arriving a year before the film releases, this is a trailer that’s giving us our first anything from this film a mere eight months before its release.

Unlike The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi didn’t leave us with a cliffhanger or a ton of huge questions in need of answering, so the story feels wide open with where it could go in Episode IX. This trailer needs to give us some idea of where it is going, what’s at stake in this film and what the characters will be up to. Obviously it will be a battle between The First Order and the Resistance, but what’s the current dynamic between those forces after the time jump? What are the characters up to and what’s going on with Kylo and Rey? Is there a new enemy or a quest that must be completed? I feel like tone alone isn’t enough; we need at least a few plot details (nothing too spoilery, of course).

These are just a few of the things that we’d like to see in the Star Wars: Episode IX trailer. The wait alone for this trailer has built up a ton of anticipation and that means expectations are sky high. This is the last time we'll ever see the first trailer from a Skywalker Saga film for the first time. That's momentous and the trailer should convey that.

Whatever it includes or doesn’t, this trailer has a lot of work to do to get everyone excited and on board for a new Star Wars film after the past two entries haven’t been universally beloved. The Episode IX trailer can do that by delivering on some of these elements, feeling epic and maybe even including a surprise or two.

Star Wars: Episode IX blasts into theaters on December 20. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule for all of this year’s biggest movies. We’ll keep you updated on all the latest Star Wars news as it drops and let us know in the comments below what you want to see in the Episode IX trailer.

George Lucas Writes Sweet Tribute To Peter Mayhew

George Lucas Writes Sweet Tribute To Peter Mayhew

Star Wars fans were saddened to learn about the recent death of Peter Mayhew, the man who brought the Wookie Chewbacca to life for the majority of the franchise. Friends and colleagues have been sharing their thoughts on the iconic actor. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars has penned his own tribute to the man where he talks about how Mayhew was discovered and placed in the film that would define his career.

According to George Lucas, finding somebody to play Chewbacca was actually quite complicated. While all Lucas was really looking for was somebody tall enough to play the part, finding that proved difficult. Eventually however, a hospital attendant named Peter Mayhew was found and Lucas cast him as soon as he saw how tall the man was. According to Lucas...

Peter was a wonderful, wonderful man. He kept his job in the hospital through the first three movies. But he fell in love with the character. And then as Star Wars grew in fame, and he started doing more festivals and public appearances, he realized he could actually make a living just off the personal appearances. He was very gentle, very sweet, very easy to get along with. He was more like a Wookie than I originally imagined a Wookie to be. Originally, I envisioned Chewie as some big ferocious beast, but Peter's Chewie wasn't really ferocious. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn't ferocious. He would be your best friend until he got angry, then stand back. He was a gentle giant.

The idea that Peter Mayhew kept his job working at a hospital while also being in the biggest movie franchise of all-time is just adorable and hilarious.

While Mayhew would have a handful of other acting jobs over the course of his career, he really did just make a living being Chewbacca for the most part. It's clear he truly loved playing the character.

Mayhew hasn't played Chewbacca at all in the last couple films, with the costume being handled by Joonas Suotamo in both Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Mayhew hadn't been in the best health of late, so his passing wasn't necessarily a shock, but it was still sad news.

George Lucas' comments in THR are a wonderful tribute from the man who created Chewbacca and found the perfect person to give him life. While Lucas says he initially envisioned Chewbacca as a ferocious beast, it was Mayhew who turned him into the lovable giant he became. It's impossible to think of Chewbacca as anything else now.

Chewbacca will live on. Joonas Suotamo is set to bring the character back in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While Mayhew may never inhabit the suit again, his contribution will certainly never be forgotten.

A Popular Walt Disney World Attraction Is Making Its Way To Disneyland Resort

A Popular Walt Disney World Attraction Is Making Its Way To Disneyland Resort

While there are many great attractions that exist at both Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World, there are also those that you can only experience if you visit one park or the other. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride hasn't been at Walt Disney World in a long time and the only remaining Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in North America is at Walt Disney World. Since 2003, if you wanted to experience the 3D film Mickey's PhilharMagic, you had to go to the east coast, or another country, but that's about to change, as the popular attraction will be making its debut at Disney California Adventure next month.

The show will open soon at the Sunset Showcase Theater in Hollywood Land. The location was the former home of Muppet*Vision 3D before being replaced by a Frozen Sing-Along Celebration in 2014. Since 2016 however, the location has been a theater without a theme that has been primarily used to show previews of upcoming Disney theatrical releases.

According to the Disney Parks Blog, Mickey's PhilharMagic will take place at the Sunset Showcase Theater, not replace it. This would seem to imply that this means the show will only be a limited engagement, rather than a new permanent attraction, though no official opening or closing date have been announced, so that's not clear.

The show is making the move during a year long celebration of Mickey Mouse, called Get Your Ears On – A Mickey and Minnie Celebration, so if I were a betting man, I'd expect to see PhilharMagic hang around for the rest of this year at least.

While the name of the attraction is Mickey's PhilharMagic, the real star of the show is Donald Duck. All of your favorite classic Disney characters, Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy are preparing a concert for the audience. Donald, while getting the orchestra ready to perform, picks up Mickey's sorcerer's hat from Fantasia, which results in a lot of magical chaos and ends up throwing the duck through a number of musical moments in classic Disney animated movies like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

In addition to the 3D film, a number of "4-D" effects, like water being sprayed at the audience, and various scents being pumped into the theater help deepen the immersion of the experience. The Muppet Theater was outfitted for at least some of these, so it's likely they'll make the jump to California.

Of the various 3D shows that have appeared at Disney Parks over the years, Mickey's PhilharMagic is absolutely one of the better shows, so seeing it be added to Disney California Adventure, in what has been a criminally underutilized space in recent years, is very nice. Hopefully, the show will hang around until something more permanent is created for the theater. The show may be 15 years old, but a decades old show is a better use of the theater than glorified movie trailers.

Images courtesy WDWnews.com/Disney

Ava DuVernay Totally Wants To Direct A John Wick Movie

Ava DuVernay Totally Wants To Direct A John Wick Movie

Ava DuVernay has become one of the most prominent and well known directors in Hollywood today. She has a strong following on socaia media and has helmed films from the Oscar winning Selma to Disney's adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. However, there is one particular area of Hollywood, the tentpole action blockbuster, which Duvernay says she has yet to get an opportunity to make, and she's very interested.

Specifically, the director of the upcoming Netflix miniseries, When They See Us, says that if she'd been offered John Wick Chapter 3, she would have been all over that. According to Duvernay...

I don’t get offered a lot, and what I do get offered is usually historical or something to do with women and black people. Like, I’m not getting John Wick 3, even though I’d love to make it. I have a good friend who directed second unit on Star Wars and is kicking ass. I have a friend who’s on Westworld right now. Are there enough of us? No. Certainly not for a lack of women being interested in or capable.

All three John Wick movies to date have been directed by Chad Stahelski, (the first was a co-directing effort with an uncredited David Leitch). Following three successful films in the franchise, and Stahelski's own comment that he's happy to keep making the films as long as people keep wanting to watch them, it seems unlikely that anybody will be taking over that director's chair anytime soon.

Having said that, Ava DuVernay's broader point, that she's not being offered many movies at all, and especially not of the genre's that tend to have broader audience appeal, is a point well taken. It seems that because DuVernay has made her name thanks to historical biopics and stories about Black people, those are the projects she's being offered.

There have been some exceptions of course. DuVernay made history becoming the first woman of color to direct a movie with a budget over $100 million with A Wrinkle in Time. She's also signed on to direct her first comic book movie with DC's New Gods. Still one would think that with DuVernay's track record there would be studios lining up to offering her work.

As she points out to The Guardian, the number of women and women of color who are working in prominent directing positions is an unfortunately small list. She does mention, Victoria Mahoney, who is the second unit director on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so there are steps forward being taken.

While we might not see Ava DuVernay direct a John Wick movie, hopefully someday she'll get a shot a big budget action movie. She could certainly bring a new perspective to the genre that it's never seen before, which might be just the sort of thing that Hollywood needs.

Meagan Good Loves A Very Specific Part About Her Top Secret Shazam Role

Meagan Good Loves A Very Specific Part About Her Top Secret Shazam Role

Warning: This story contains major SPOILERS for Shazam!

In one of the best kept superhero movie secrets in recent memory, the end of Shazam! saw Billy Batson transform his foster siblings into the Shazam Family to help him defeat Doctor Sivana. This necessitated adult actors to play the grown up, superhero versions of the kids. Among them was Meagan Good, who plays the superhero version of Faithe Herman’s Darla Dudley.

CinemaBlend got to speak with Meagan Good in St. Louis while she was promoting her new film The Intruder. During the conversation, the actress spoke about the very specific part she loved about her top secret Shazam! role. She said:

More action. More action, more fighting. I also love, because I definitely wanted to do the action and be kick-ass, but I love that I get to be a little girl. I love that I get to show the goofy side of myself because I don’t get to show that in most of the characters that I play, so it’s kind of like the best of two worlds.

Like most actors it seems, Meagan Good was thrilled to do all of the fun action and fighting that her superhero role required, but the part that she really loved was that her character was a kid. Although Superhero Darla may look like an adult on the outside, on the inside she was still just the sweet and precocious little girl that we had seen throughout the film.

The nature of the role allowed Meagan Good to let her inner kid come out, have fun with her performance and act goofy. As she said, her goofiness is not the kind of thing that she usually gets to show in most of her roles, and certainly not in something like The Intruder, which is a thriller that pits her against an insane Dennis Quaid.

You see that goofiness in Meagan Good’s performance in Shazam! and it really sells the fact that this is a little girl that has suddenly found herself with incredible powers in an adult superhero body.

So the actress loved her secret cameo as Superhero Darla in Shazam! because it gave her something different to do than what she generally does from an acting perspective, while also allowing her to express herself and show a side of her personality that people don’t often get to see.

Combine that with the opportunity to do a bunch of kick-ass action, and it really made Shazam! a rewarding experience for Meagan Good. Hopefully that experience gets to continue and play an even bigger part of the story in Shazam! 2. Although a sequel hasn’t been confirmed as of yet, there are some signs that it is in the works and it would be a shame if we didn’t get to see more after one of the DCEU’s best films to date.

You can listen to Meagan Good speak to CinemaBlend about her top secret role in Shazam! in the video below:

While we don’t know when you’ll be able to see Meagan Good back in the superhero realm, you can still catch the actress on the big screen now in The Intruder. Next year she stars in the video game adaptation Monster Hunter. For everything heading to theaters this year, check out our 2019 Release Schedule.

One Thing Captain Marvel Is Seriously Missing

One Thing Captain Marvel Is Seriously Missing

This past weekend saw the release of Captain Marvel, and based on the weekend’s box office, a lot of people wanted to see this movie. Professional reviews were complimentary, if not glowing, and overall I really enjoyed it. However, as I walked out of the theater last week, I must admit I felt like there was one thing missing from Captain Marvel. The music. Don’t get me wrong, Captain Marvel had music. It had good music, but the music that you remember coming out of the theater is the 1990s pop soundtrack, not the score that was composed for the film. Captain Marvel had some epic moments, but it was short on an epic theme.

A lot of comparison has been made between Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman. Both are recent solo superhero movies starring female leads. However, when I compare my emotional impressions of these characters to each other, Wonder Woman comes out on top quite easily. The reason, I think, is that when I think of Wonder Woman, I think of Hans Zimmer’s powerful theme that he created in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. You know what I mean. It's the one moment in the film that everyone agrees was great.

That music simply isn’t there when I think of Captain Marvel, and the character suffers because of it.

To be fair, the problem of a less than memorable score is not exclusive to Captain Marvel. It’s a problem the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe suffers from. The music isn’t bad and nothing is wrong with it, but there’s nothing quite like a memorable character theme, and few Marvel movies have them. Captain Marvel does have a theme, and it’s actually pretty decent, but I had to play the soundtrack on Spotify to hear it. I couldn’t tell you when in the movie it gets played. I don't recall hearing it at all, and that's part of the problem.

If you listen to Pinar Toprak's Captain Marvel score in its entirety, you'll hear that it's actually really good. The problem is the way it's mixed into the film. It's designed to fall into the background. It's designed to have you not notice it. It makes one wonder why the studio bothers to score so much of the movie if they don't want you to hear the music.

Marvel hasn't seemed as if it wanted us to care about the music for years. If the studio did, the music would be more consistent across films. Iron Man has three different themes in three different solo films, more if you count songs by AC/DC. Captain America has an actually pretty great theme in The First Avenger, which is then barely used in The Winter Soldier and utterly forgotten after that. Instead, Cap has a new theme in that movie, one you still never hear again. While Marvel has done a stellar job of making sure that its films have continuity of story, there is none in the music.

Some of this may be because nearly every Marvel movie is handled by a different composer, and clearly those composers want to make their own music, but it's not like the Harry Potter films forgot the theme John Williams wrote after he stopped scoring the movies.

Superhero themes can be some of the best pieces of music in modern films. John Williams’ theme for Superman and Danny Elfman’s Batman theme are classics. One Marvel theme, the Avengers theme, is a key part of the single most memorable moment in all of the MCU.

That moment would not have been nearly so memorable without that piece of music. It’s one of the few pieces of music that has been carried over from one film to another. It even shows up in Captain Marvel. It was at that point when I heard it that I realized that the movie had no noticeable theme for the main character the movie was actually about.

Of the 20+ movies and 10 + years that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are only a few themes worthy of note. If you look back at Avengers: Infinity War, a movie that contains basically every character who has ever appeared in the MCU, the only pieces of music you might recognize are the Avengers theme, which gets used twice, and the Wakanda theme from Black Panther.

And if we're being honest, one of those uses is totally wrong. The second time we hear the Avengers theme in Infinity War is when Thor, Groot, and Rocket arrive during the battle of Wakanda and help turn the tide. Only one of those characters is an actual Avenger. That moment would have been the perfect place for Thor's theme, an epic piece of music that told you the Asgardian was once again ready to fight with a new weapon by his side.

The problem is, if that piece of music had played, nobody would have recognized it because nobody can hum Thor's theme. Does Thor even have a theme? He has two actually. The movie needed a piece of music that conveyed to the audience all of that same information, and the Avengers theme is the only piece of music the audience knows well enough to be able to do that.

In the case of Captain Marvel, there is at least something of a reason why the score was downplayed. The focus, musically speaking, was on the '90s era music that made up the bulk of the soundtrack. The movie wants you to hear No Doubt more than it does the orchestral themes.

Still, we don't have to only pick one. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies make their '70s pop soundtrack not simply part of the movie, but part of the plot, and that didn't stop James Gunn and Tyler Bates from giving the team a solid theme that was used well in both Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

I loved almost everything about Captain Marvel. Everything on the screen was great, and yet, somehow I found something was lacking. What was missing was what I didn't hear. I hope that when Captain Marvel returns in Avengers: Endgame, her theme will be given some room to breathe. I hope some attention is given to it, because it will only make the character stronger.

Jordan Peele Wasn't Sure He Could Make A Whole Movie In A Year

Jordan Peele Wasn't Sure He Could Make A Whole Movie In A Year

This past weekend, Jordan Peele conquered the sophomore slump with the launch of an incredible success. More than two years removed from the launch of Get Out, the filmmaker has now absolutely horrified audiences everywhere with Us, and it's proven both a critical and box office hit. It's pretty incredible when you think about it, however, because the movie was actually made start-to-finish in about a year - and the writer/director behind it wasn't entirely confident going in that it could be done properly within that time frame.

Following the theatrical release of Get Out, Jordan Peele could really just move directly into his next project, primarily because of his directorial debut's success. The quality of the feature kept him fully invested in it and discussing it for more than a year, and it meant that he wasn't able to get to work on Us in earnest until early 2018. This was actually a serious concern for the filmmaker, who revealed his thoughts on the matter during an interview with Polygon:

When I was doing the Oscar campaign for Get Out, it sort of took me out of the creative process for several months. Us really got creatively going in full after that, last March, about a year ago. It turns out I can make a movie from start to finish in about a year, although a lifetime of imagery was tapped for it.

There is no part of Us that feels like it was in any way a rushed production, and, in fact, the complete opposite is true. This is a movie that audiences are going to be digging into and rewatching for years to come, and films like that usually take years of delicate creation to fully create. The fact that Us was made in such a limited time frame truly only makes the finished product that much more impressive.

Obviously Jordan Peele isn't the first filmmaker to start and finish a movie in twelve months, and it's worth noting that Us isn't exactly a giant, CGI-filled blockbuster, but one has to keep in mind that every film is taxing experience to get made - no matter how big or how small. Peele clearly had to exude a ton of creative energy to get the work done, and it paid off in a huge way - but one also has to wonder if it's a pace he could or should keep up.

It really all comes down ultimately to Jordan Peele's comfort. If he feels that he can confidently make a movie every other year, giving himself 12 months for creation and 12 months for promotion, that's wonderful. If, however, that proves to be too much for him, hopefully he will get the opportunity to slow down and work at a more reasonable pace. The guy certainly has a lot on his plate (let's not forget he's producing the new Twilight Zone for CBS All Access, as well as a fresh take on Candyman), so if he needs to take some extra time to be the best filmmaker he can be, I can't imagine there is any fan out there who would hold it against him.

Jordan Peele has not yet given any clues as to what he's planning as his third feature, but you can be sure that we will be waiting for updates with bated breath. In the meantime, Us is now playing in theaters everywhere.