FINAL DESTINATION
“THIS MOVIE, IT’S ABOUT THIS new generation: what they’ve inherited, the light, and the dark. And asking the question as they face the greatest evil: ‘are they prepared? Are they ready?’” JJ Abrams dropped this tantalising info nugget in the first five minutes of the Episode IX panel at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Little did the 2,000 people in attendance know that 90 minutes later, the galaxy’s ‘greatest evil’ would be on everyone’s lips.
For Emperor Palpatine is back. Or, as everyone discovered mere moments after a familiar cackle sent shivers down collective spines, he’s back in . The how and why is still a mystery (though we have some theories which you can read on p38), but Palpatine’s return is revealing. Where director Rian Johnson seemed to share the philosophy of this new trilogy’s antagonist Kylo Ren – to “let the past die. Kill it, if you have to” – Abrams can’t resist embracing history wholeheartedly.
