Star Wars Celebration Orlando Essential Stories: Days Three And Four.

While Battlefront II and the last season of Rebels were yesterday’s two big focuses, they were far from being the only big stories at the event. Here are crucial stories and details to come out of Star Wars Celebration Orlando in the final two days of the convention.

 

The Last Jedi Will Have A Three-Paragraph Opening Crawl

 

In spite of the fact that The Last Jedi picks up immediately after The Force Awakens, there’s still going to be an Opening Crawl that will kick everything off. The good news, though, is that it won’t be a boring recap of the events of TFA – director Rian Johnson has explained that there’s a lot of exposition to put out regarding the political state of the Galaxy Far, Far Away following the destruction of both Starkiller Base and the entire Hosnian System.

 

Star Tours Will Visit Crait

 

It’s been known for a while that Star Tours would be getting a new expansion that would serve as a tie-in to The Last Jedi, but what planet that would be remained unclear as a result of the secrecy around the project. At a recent panel discussing the future of Star Wars at Disney’s theme parks, it was revealed that the saline planet of Crait would be the next place that the galactic travel service will go to.

 

Captain Phasma’s Story Revealed

 

Captain Phasma has really lucked out with representation in media as of late. In addition to her role in the Poe Dameron comic book series and The Last Jedi promising to make up for her extremely limited role in The Force Awakens, it was confirmed that the character would receive two new stories centered around her – Phasma, a novel covering her rise to power, and Captain Phasma, a Marvel Comics miniseries showing how she escaped from Starkiller Base and what she did to get back in the First Order’s good graces between the events of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

 

Disney Releases Star Wars Land Featurette

 

While the newest featurette discussing Star Wars Land doesn’t really tell us a lot about the park in production that we didn’t already know, it does have a lot of cool concept art and effectively shows the construction in progress.

 

Odds And Ends With Marvel And Del Rey

 

There were a couple of things mentioned in the Del Rey and Marvel Panels, and while they’re not substantial, they’re still worth mentioning. The first is that Luke Skywalker originally had a role in the Aftermath Trilogy – being the focus of an interlude chapter that was cut for unknown reasons. The second is that Mr. Bones, who also appeared in Aftermath, will somehow appear in the ongoing Poe Dameron comic series. Again, nothing huge, but still worth mentioning all the same.

 

Luke Doesn’t Seem To Recognize Rey When They Meet On Ahch-To

 

 

Daisy Ridley helped explain the differences in the student-teacher character dynamic between Luke and Rey over Luke and Yoda or Luke and Obi-Wan, and while she states the obvious difference – that Luke is the teacher this time around – she also mentions that Luke initially doesn’t know who she is (something that was hinted at with the “Who are you?” line in the sizzle reel of footage for shareholders). It’s still worth noting, though, that Yoda didn’t appear to recognize Luke when he first appeared on Dagobah – and the script for TFA did describe Luke knowing who Rey was and why she was there – so there might be more to this situation than meets the eye.

 

Battlefront II Gives Fans What They Want

 

Fans had a lot of things to say about DICE’s reboot of the Battlefront series, and they clearly listened. The game will feature not only a single-player campaign (more on that in a moment), but will explore all three eras of the Star Wars films, take space battles to new heights, feature playable, upgradable classes, and have a much greater amount of content available at launch. Beyond what they’re adding to the game is a matter of what they’re taking out – the game’s DLC cycle will not be hidden behind an expensive Season Pass this time around. The creators claimed that the Season Pass format that they used limited the number of players that could access the new game modes, so the plan is for “something better” to serve as a way to distribute DLC for Battlefront II.

 

The Tale Of Inferno Squadron

 

 

What’s the subject of Battlefront II‘s single-player campaign, you might ask? You get to play as the bad guys this time around – or rather, the heroes of the villainous side. Following the destruction of the Death Star II, the noble-though-brutal Inferno Squadron doubled-down on their resolve to put an end to the Rebel Alliance and their successors. The campaign helps fill the gap between Return Of The Jedi and The Force Awakens as it shows a team of Imperials fight the Rebellion in the Empire’s dying days before they turn around to help form the foundation of the First Order. It’s also been revealed that Christie Golden’s Inferno Squad book is actually the official tie-in novel to Battlefront II, in spite of being a direct sequel to Rogue One. The book will tell the story of how many members of the team circa Battlefront II met and their efforts to crush the now-leaderless Partisans following the destruction of the first Death Star.

 

Rebels Season 4 Will Be The Last

 

All good things must come to an end, and Rebels is no different. Dave Filoni has expressed that it was his creative decision to end the show at this point, with a final season to wrap everything up at the peak of the show’s narrative rather than to pad it out. As he described it, the last season of the show will be fifteen episodes in length, will take a darker direction, will revolve around tying up loose ends to the various plot threads, and will give the series a proper conclusion (the kind that The Clone Wars never got, as Filoni alluded to when he made this announcement). Joining the cast will be Warwick Davis as Rukh, Thrawn’s Noghri assassin from Star Wars Legends.

 

Dave Filoni Up For Directing A Live-Action Spin-Off

 

Part of the reason why Rebels is ending a little earlier than most people are expecting might have a little something to do with Dave Filoni’s plans for the future. Aside from his continued status as the executive producer of all animated Star Wars projects, Filoni just explained that he’s interested in directing a live-action Star Wars movie after getting a good idea of how he’d approach such a movie. While I would personally prefer that he makes an animated Star Wars film (and it’s only a matter of time until that happens), I certainly can’t say that I wouldn’t be interested in seeing what he’d do with a live-action film. The man knows the source material better than most, and I think it’d really show if he were put into the director’s chair. (Seriously, he’d be a great candidate for that Obi-Wan Kenobi movie we keep hearing about.)

 

Ahsoka Lives!

 

Dave Filoni also walked in the Rebels Panel with an “Ahsoka Lives?” shirt, but after the trailer was unveiled, fans noticed that he’d taped a “!” over part of the shirt so that it now read “Ahsoka Lives!” – though, in typical Filoni fashion, he elected to not address it when pressed for details by a very excited crowd. The possibility of the character’s return after her ambiguous demise shown in the Season 2 finale of Rebels was first alluded to back in Celebration Europe III less than a year ago, and now it’s pretty clear that we’re going to see what happened to her in Season 4… Along with getting a clear idea of how she’ll live on.

 

Celebration 2019, Coming… Soon? To Somewhere?

 

For whatever reason, Warwick Davis and the people at Celebration Orlando said absolutely nothing about when and where the next iteration of the convention will be held. All we know is that the event will happen sometime in 2019, an before Episode IX hits theaters.

 

What were your favorite Celebration moments this year? Let us know in the comments below.

 

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Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

Grant Davis (Pomojema)

Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

44 thoughts on “Star Wars Celebration Orlando Essential Stories: Days Three And Four.

  • April 17, 2017 at 6:57 am
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    Star Wars Celebration in AUSTRALIA

    just gonna leave that there….

    • April 17, 2017 at 7:00 am
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      A pipe dream. Too few people live there and fewer would travel there for a con.

    • April 17, 2017 at 11:04 am
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      How bout in Dubai? 😛

    • April 17, 2017 at 4:33 pm
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      Would pack it out. We have enough venues here and it would be a great destination for the guests.

  • April 17, 2017 at 6:58 am
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    The Phasma explanation should be rich considering Snoke, Hux, and Kylo seem like such forgiving guys.

    • April 17, 2017 at 7:02 am
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      But but but Vader! No, He was basically sucker punched by the Falcon not to mention a full Sith Lord rather than a Rhonda Lousey clone who went down without throwing a single punch.

  • April 17, 2017 at 8:04 am
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    Out of what’s to come this year after SFC ending, I await Phasma’s backstory unfolding with both the comic mini-series and the novel, the final season of SWR, and definitely the upcoming episode VIII: TLJ with the late Carrie Fisher’s final starring role.

    Can’t wait. ^_^

  • April 17, 2017 at 10:50 am
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    Maybe Ashoka Lives means she is dead but that Ashoka lives in our heart as long as we remember her

    • April 17, 2017 at 6:03 pm
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      Are you for real?

    • April 17, 2017 at 9:06 pm
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      lul

  • April 17, 2017 at 11:42 am
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    Is it wrong to want it back in California again? I have never been. I would love for it to be in San Francisco, but i’m not sure if there is a convention Center big enough there. I went to WonderCon once at the Mascone Center. It was big… but not SDCC big.

    • April 17, 2017 at 12:04 pm
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      Maybe they can try in another country, like the UAE. 😉

    • April 17, 2017 at 4:11 pm
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      No. I’m sort of hoping for Anaheim again. It was a fantastic location last time. If Celebration lands there again, I’m taking my family and we’re going to hit up Disneyland while we’re there.

  • April 17, 2017 at 1:50 pm
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    I’m glad they’re keeping three paragraphs as always.

    I just hope the start of the trailer (the starfield turning out to be a rock) isn’t how they begin the actual film after the crawl.

    • April 17, 2017 at 4:21 pm
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      Probably not. The way it was presented in the trailer, that would mean that whatever happened to Rey beforehand, won’t be shown.

      My guess is it will start with some First Order ship (like most movies starting with a ship in space, repetition or not), or actually start where TFA ended, with that long shot of Rey and Luke.

      • April 17, 2017 at 6:10 pm
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        Sometimes repetition is good, we need that first shot to be those glorious stars before something moves into frame…..anything less isn’t Star Wars 🙂

        • April 17, 2017 at 11:26 pm
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          Agreed.

          Considering it went over some people’s head concerning what really happened when the Hosnian system was destroyed, starting the movie with some exposition (through the crawl and some early scenes), I think that would be a smart way to go, including explaning what happened after Starkiller Base was blown up, where Kylo and co. ended up.

    • April 17, 2017 at 5:20 pm
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      They said it picks up where TFA left off with Rey holding the lightsaber. They even re-shot it. I doubt it would start with Rey panting on a rock then suddenly cut back to Rey holding the lightsaber out to Luke.

      • April 17, 2017 at 5:34 pm
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        Of course, I don’t mean that EXACT shot, but something to that effect. They have to start the saga films with a tilt on the starfield, then a ship entering the frame.

    • April 17, 2017 at 5:56 pm
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      The trailer usually doesn’t show the opening of the movie.

      • April 17, 2017 at 7:03 pm
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        Again, I’m not saying that’s the actual first shot. I’m just saying that I hope they don’t dare to use that same trick (starfield turning out to be a rock)

        I know it’s very unlikely. I’m just putting it on the table.

        • April 17, 2017 at 11:26 pm
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          I dont think you have to worry.

    • April 17, 2017 at 7:11 pm
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      I don’t think the film will open with that for the following reasons:
      1. We’ve already seen BTS of The Last Jedi with Rian Johnson filming Ridley and Hamill meeting for the first time. Coincides with the reports that the movie will begin right after TFA.
      2. The trailer for TFA did a similar trick, started what look like outer space but turned out to be the back of the inside of a Star Destroyer panel that Rey slides open with her hand.

    • April 17, 2017 at 7:20 pm
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      I think the first shot involving Rey will be a continuation of the last scene of TFA, as the Last Jedi BTS footage showed. Who knows whether that will be the first scene of the movie, or if it happens before or after the crawl.

      The Last Jedi is in unchartered waters.

      • April 17, 2017 at 7:33 pm
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        That’s the kind of notion that scares me. Nothing should come before the crawl. The saga films should have certain style rules, unlike the Anthology ones (and even those should follow some).

        • April 17, 2017 at 7:54 pm
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          I agree, but to some extent The Last Jedi will have to deviate from the saga formula.

    • April 17, 2017 at 10:11 pm
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      My guess is the first scene of the film will involve the First Order, much like The Force Awakens. While it will pick up right where The Last Jedi left off, that doesn’t necessarily mean we will get to Luke and Rey immediately. They can wait a few minutes while the First Order kicks some butt halfway across the galaxy.

      Alternatively, perhaps Kylo Ren will be meeting up with Snoke.

    • April 17, 2017 at 11:11 pm
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      Agreed.

    • April 17, 2017 at 11:25 pm
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      I remember readings someone’s theory that the film might start with the end of TFA, but from Luke’s perspective. I could easily see the crawl then a pan down to Ahch-to with the Falcon flying overhead and down to the planet. Then it cuts to Luke watching the Falcon from the distance and eventually Rey walking up.

      But, I could see a set up scene from the First Order be the first scene, then the scene I described or just the first shot of them her handing Luke the saber.

  • April 17, 2017 at 4:48 pm
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    I’m surprised that we didn’t get any information about upcoming SW video games aside from Battlefront II.

    • April 17, 2017 at 4:51 pm
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      Hmm, maybe they’re reserved for D23.

    • April 17, 2017 at 5:31 pm
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      I think they are more reserved to be talked about in a longer format across the EA Play event. They have more time at their own convention to dive into all the games under their brand.

    • April 17, 2017 at 5:56 pm
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      I think they wanted to focus on showing the changes to BF2

    • April 17, 2017 at 7:57 pm
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      Seems like they’re too early in development to show much. I would expect something more at EA Play.

      • April 18, 2017 at 1:55 am
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        Viceral’s Star Wars game has been in development for over 3 years, currently targeted at 2018. It had to have been rebooted at some point, but it’s still disappointing that we’ve only seen one tiny pre-rendered teaser. Respawn might be ready to show something at EA Play but only Battlefront 2 will be playable. Rumors are Bioware Austin are also working on something.

  • April 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm
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    Celebration Tatooine, come for the celebrities, stay for the sand

  • April 17, 2017 at 10:10 pm
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    was that Katarn in the Rebels trailer?

    • April 18, 2017 at 2:12 am
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      Where?

      • April 18, 2017 at 2:23 am
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        I’ll have to watch again later and get time stamp.

    • April 18, 2017 at 4:08 pm
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      It was Kallus.

      • April 18, 2017 at 4:49 pm
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        thanks!

  • April 18, 2017 at 10:18 pm
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    Cool! I like that they including the noghri. Star Wars land is gonna be awesome. Battlefront 2 looks way better

  • April 19, 2017 at 4:52 am
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    Since Battlefront 2 looks like the story will begin with the destruction of the second Death Star and go at least as far as the creation of the First Order, could the female character seen in the trailer, who is obviously the main character, be Phasma? I know there’s a novel coming out for Phasma and a couple comics (taking place after TFA) so I’m sure we’re going to get an origin, but I was just thinking that would be a fine idea if the playable character is Phasma before she dons the silver armor.

    • April 19, 2017 at 12:47 pm
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      While I don’t think that is a bad idea at all, I don’t think you hire someone as talented as Gwendoline Christie to keep the mask on the entire trilogy. Since the character in BF2 isn’t white it wouldn’t work.

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