No, Benicio Del Toro is probably not playing Boba Fett's son
Fake scoopers are having delusions of grandeur, Josh Gad is still trolling Daisy Ridley and ILM is Tarkin one for the team in today’s round-up of Star Wars movie news.
Welcome to the first edition of The Force Report, a (hopefully) daily round-up of Star Wars-related movie news you might have missed.
Let’s dive straight into it, shall we?
People think Benicio Del Toro is playing Boba Fett’s son, for some insane reason
In what might be the fakest fake news since #Pizzagate, a number of outlets (that I’m not going to dignify with links) are reporting that Benicio Del Toro is playing Boba Fett’s son, ‘Vikram Fett’, in The Last Jedi.
Apparently, the source for this is… YouTuber Mike Zeroh? Based on a cast listing he apparently saw on WikiWand? A listing which has since been changed to ‘TBA’?
Look, it’s certainly true that Benicio Del Toro is in the movie, and he's certainly capable of playing a badass bounty hunter. But it’s unlikely, at best, that he’s playing Vikram Fett.
Putting aside the fact that there is literally no real evidence to support this ‘story’, let’s keep in mind that Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett, and the voice of Boba Fett in the Special Editions) and Daniel Logan (young Boba Fett) are both of Māori descent.
But I guess we’re saying Disney and Lucasfilm have just decided that Māori and Puerto Ricans are interchangeable?
Then again, this is a universe in which Hayden Christensen and James Earl Jones play the same character, so…
(This is as good a chance as any, by the way, to bring up a question I’ve always had about Darth Vader — is his voice somehow unique to his helmet, or are there countless people running around the galaxy with vocoders that make them sound like James Earl Jones? It’s almost certainly the latter, right? And if so, why doesn’t noted Darth Vader fanboy Kylo Ren use that same effect to make himself sound like Grandpa? (I mean, aside from the obvious reason that we want to be able to hear Adam Driver?))
Anyway, Benicio Del Toro (probably) isn’t Boba Fett’s son, guys.
The rule of three
Josh Gad has released the third and final video in his quest to get some answers about The Last Jedi out of his Murder on the Orient Express co-star Daisy Ridley, and it’s the best one yet.
After enlisting Judi Dench last time around, Gad has assembled an all-star line-up that has to be seen to be believed.
If nothing else, the presence of Daisy Ridley guarantees that we’re all going to see this Murder on the Orient Express remake, yeah?
Directed by Kenneth Branagh (who also stars as Hercule Poirot), the film will be out this November – before The Last Jedi, in other words.
Weekend at Wilhuff’s
Just in time for the Academy Awards, ILM has released another Rogue One VFX reel, this time focusing on the creation of Grand Moff Tarkin.
I’m on record as being one of those viewers who found the effect distracting, and I would definitely have preferred to see less of Tarkin in the film. But this short video leaves no doubt about the huge amount of work and care that went into bringing the character back to life, and as far as these things go, it’s the most convincing effort we’ve seen on screen so far.
If you missed them last week, ILM’s videos on creating Jedha and Scarif, and the film’s final space battle, are also well worth watching.
Pentecostalism
The great John Boyega has shared another pic from the set of Pacific Rim: Uprising.
Say what you will about The Force Awakens — well, not really, I thought the film was brilliant and I can easily be lured into arguments about it — but it really gave us a pair of legitimate new movie stars in Boyega and Ridley.
(Yes, I love Attack the Block too, but it's not really what propelled Boyega into the stratosphere, is it?)
Pacific Rim: Uprising, directed by Daredevil’s Steven S DeKnight and starring Boyega as Jake Pentecost, hits theatres next February.
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