"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" may finally be dying down a bit, but that doesn't mean that general "Star Wars" excitement is. We've got Gareth Edwards' "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" hitting theaters later this year and Rian Johnson's "Star Wars: Episode VIII" to look forward to in May 2017. Though production for the latter was scheduled to kick off in the immediate future, it looks like the start date is being pushed back slightly as the script undergoes one last rewrite.
Why the need for a rewrite? Don't worry, this isn't a "World War Z" situation where the studio is deeply concerned with the quality. Instead, this rewrite is meant to reduce the importance of two new characters so that the heroes we just met and fell in love with - Daisy Ridley's Rey, John Boyega's Finn and Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron - can get more screen time. Here's how a reporter for The Wrap described it on Meet the Movie Press:
"I said before there were two young female roles, now I actually heard that the rewrite will make these roles smaller. They want to get to know better the characters they already have. So the new rewrite is shrinking the new roles in order to spend more time with Rey, Poe and so on."
This is, without a question, the right move. While "The Force Awakens" was a rollicking good time, the biggest critique of the film was its lack of background information on the new characters. We didn't really get to know who Rey, Finn, etc. were before this movie and many of their origins were left up in the air. It's fair to say that fans want some answers.
Who are Rey's parents? Why was Finn with The First Order since a young age? We'd like to see these loose ends explored in "Episode VIII." Plus, neither of the previous trilogies introduced significant characters after the first film outside of Lando Calrissian in "The Empire Strikes Back," and it's not like Luke Skywalker is going to have just 10 seconds of screen time this time around.
What do you think, "Star Wars" fans? Let us know in the comments below.
