We’re now less than three weeks from the release date of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and just two weeks until the movie’s premiere in Los Angeles. Thus, the marketing machine continues to ramp up, with TV spots dropping all over the place, and tiny new details sneaking out of J.J. Abrams’ Mystery Box, though nothing that could yet be called a spoiler, as such.
First up is news that John Williams isn’t the only composer to have contributed music to the movie. Abrams was on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" last night, and revealed that he enlisted Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer and creator of “Hamilton,” one of the biggest and best-received Broadway musicals in decades, to help write the music for what he describes as “our version of the cantina scene” (referring to the classic bar scene in the original movie).
As you’ll see from the video below, Abrams says that John Williams had asked not to write the music for the moment in “The Force Awakens,” and after Miranda jokingly suggested he contribute, Abrams says that they teamed up to write together, with the composer/star confirming on Twitter that they “worked on it between 6pm and 7:30 on 2 show days for the past 2 months.” It’s very exciting stuff, and we can only hope it leads to further collaborations between the two. Star Wars hip-hop musical, anyone? [The Verge]
Elsewhere, Abrams did a ‘town hall’ — something we’d assumed only politicians did — last night and spilled various additional beans via EW. He says that Carrie Fisher’s Leia, already reported to be a general, has grown up in the intervening years since “Return Of The Jedi,” saying, “You are who you are naturally, but as you go through life, you harden in some ways, you hopefully become more enlightened in others. Her evolution from princess to general is part of her life experience, but she’s always going to be Leia.”
He also weighed in on the dark world of fan theories, saying that his favorite is the Reddit one that suggests that Jar Jar Binks is an evil character who could turn out to be pulling the strings in the new movies, saying, “There was this unbelievably lengthy analysis, in a very seriously thought-out way, as to why it’s obviously true that he is [evil]. That to me is remarkable.” Remarkably…true?
Abrams also praised the “wonderful ferocity” of Adam Driver as new villain Kylo Ren, and also told "Good Morning America" that he thinks the film will appeal more to women than previous movies, saying, "Star Wars was always a boy’s thing…I was really hoping this could be a movie that mothers could take their daughters to as well.” It’s perhaps an impression that women who already love the franchise would take exception to, but it’s nice to think that he’s been thinking with a more universal approach in mind.
And finally, via Slashfilm, Daisy Ridley revealed over the weekend to Glamour Magazine that Steven Spielberg has already seen the movie “three times.” And Spielberg, talking to RTL (also via Slashfilm) commented on the movie himself, saying “I think this new Star Wars could be the biggest movie ever.” Will he be right? We’ll be finding out in a few weeks, on December 18th.
