Poor old Jar Jar Binks. There are dozens of Luke Skywalkers inside the 20,000-capacity ExCeL in east London for Star Wars Celebration Europe, and scores of Reys and Kylo Rens from new film The Force Awakens. Even Itchy, Chewbacca’s dad from the appalling 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, is here. But there is no sign of the bumbling Gungan from the appallingly received prequels.
If the true test of a modern, global megafranchise is the number of fans prepared to shell out for a full-size adult costume, it’s clear Star Wars hit light speed with last year’s JJ Abrams-directed blockbuster megalith. Almost four decades after the space opera helped usher in the blockbuster era, Star Wars is bigger than ever.
The Force Awakens – which with $2.066bn (£1.5bn) in box office takings is the third-biggest film of all time – was the first stage in relaunching the brand following George Lucas’s much-criticised 1999-2005 prequels and Disney’s $4.05bn purchase of Lucasfilm in October 2012.
Now there is talk of a Star Wars film every year for the foreseeable future, and the Celebration Europe event is one part of the hype machine built to pave the way for perennial box-office success.
The conference reaches London six months before Disney debuts a new style of Star Wars movie. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will feature no lightsabers, Jedi or wookiees, but the studio has confirmed that shiny evil Sith lord Darth Vader will return.
Gareth Edwards’ film takes place immediately before the original 1977 Star Wars, and focuses on the efforts of a band of Rebel grunts to steal the plans to the first Death Star. The movie has been dogged by rumours Disney asked for reshoots to inject more knockabout space fun, but at ExCeL, a Friday evening panel featuring Edwards has queues stretching to Tatooine and back.
After Rogue One, December 2017 will herald The Force Awakens’ sequel proper, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII. This will centre on the returning Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, who spent much of his Friday appearance at the conference humorously bemoaning the fact that he barely featured in The Force Awakens – at least until the final scene, when Daisy Ridley’s Rey finds the monk-like Jedi knight doing his hermit thing on a remote island.
“The first words in the opening crawl are ‘Luke Skywalker has vanished,’” a noticeably trim Hamill tells the assembled throngs of Yodas, Obi-Wans, wide-eyed kiddies and 40something men in Iron Maiden T-shirts. “I thought, ‘Great, this is all about me’. I thought I came in in the forest when the lightsaber flies off. I thought ‘Oh, what a great entrance’. But then Rey caught it? She hasn’t even finished her training!
“I went to train and I lost all this weight,” laughs Hamill. “I thought I must be doing something physical if they’re sending me to the gym. I think they could have prepared me a little better.”
But it’s clear the 64-year-old, who has largely worked as a voice actor in the years since the original trilogy, is delighted to be back centre stage and holding his lightsaber. And the Star Wars acolytes love him: Hamill has only to drop an anecdote about Lucas from the filming of the original film – the great man never did tell him whether to play Skywalker straight or ham it up – and the crowd are fully feeling the Force.
