Star Wars Bits: New Toys, ‘Han Solo’ Movie Planets, ‘Rebels’ Season

In this edition of Star Wars Bits:

Tons more toys from The Last Jedi to fill your entire house
Han Solo looks to be going to two MAJOR Star Wars locations
A Certain Point of View gets even better
New Star Wars comics on the way
And much more!

A young hero takes a deep dive into the Empire's history. Concept art for The Force Awakens by Ryan Church. pic.twitter.com/YYSDNabHtv

— Star Wars (@starwars) September 14, 2017

A cool previously unrevealed piece of concept art shows “a young hero” diving into the ruins of the Death Star. One would assume this would have to be on Endor, and may have even been based on George Lucas’s original treatment. Neat for the official account to release something so “Elseworlds-y.”

In a pair of interviews with Collider, director John Landis talked about the situation at Lucasfilm with directors being replaced. His first interview criticized the company for the way directors have been removed at various stages of the project, but he wanted to be perfectly clear: he was not going at J.J. Abrams, Ron Howard, or anyone else brought into projects late.

“It’s unfortunate because I don’t mind criticizing the new Lucasfilm, but I do mind people thinking that I was criticizing the filmmakers because I wasn’t,” he said in the second interview. It makes perfect sense that a filmmaker would stand up for other filmmakers.

We hope MovieWeb was already limber and/or made of elastic, because they are streeeeeeeeetching with their latest theory article. In the article, they point to Billie Lourd revealing on Ellen that she auditioned for the role of Rey as…and I’m struggling not to actively laugh out loud just while typing this…”Proof Leia is Rey’s Real Mom.” They say that an actress who happens to be the daughter of the actress playing another character auditioning for that role means the character must also be the daughter. They also point to the old chestnut of Leia hugging Rey and not Chewie the second they land in The Force Awakens, despite Chewbacca maybe just wanting to be alone at the time and Rey/Leia both being Force sensitive so having a shared connection through that but WHATEVER.

The Last Jedi novelization has been delayed from its initially scheduled release, which was to be at or around the film’s release, to March 6, 2018. Most likely there are some film edits (possibly around Leia) that they want to make sure are reflected correctly in the novelization. But TheWrap (hey guys, it’s Lucasfilm, lowercase F, always has been, FYI) speculates this may all have to do with Episode IX‘s own changes, and wanting the novelization to lead into those better. Personally, it just means we can read the book of the film right around a month before it hits Blu-ray, and that’ll make for some great comparison reading.