R.I.P.: Director Wes Craven passes away at 76

Wes Craven, the legendary director of the influential horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street has passed away, as initially reported by THR, and thereafter confirmed by the director’s official Twitter page. Craven reportedly succumbed to brain cancer. He was 76 years old.

http://t.co/eyXPs6ONPe—
Wes Craven (@wescraven) August 31, 2015

Craven’s long filmography included entries in many different genres, but his name will forever be synonymous with the scarred, knife-gloved ghoul Freddy Krueger from the original 1984 Elm Street along with numerous other horror titles which changed the genre for good. His influence on American horror and pop culture in general cannot be underestimated.

Wesley Earl Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio on August 2, 1939 into a strict Baptist family. His mother was reportedly severely religious and he evidently never developed a close relationship with his father, who has been described as distant and violent in nature. Craven attended Wheaton College in Illinois, earning an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology before gaining a master’s in Writing and Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University.

Craven taught briefly at Westminster College and at what is now Clarkson University before moving into filmmaking, with his first job in the industry as a sound editor at a New York post-production house. Craven then moved into directing X-rated films, as stated during an interview for the porn documentary Inside Deep Throat.

Craven’s breakthrough was the 1972 low budget exploitation-horror shocker Last House on the Left, which Craven wrote, directed and edited. Produced by Sean S. Cunningham – who would go on to make the original 1980 Friday the 13th – and based on Swedish master Ingmar Bergman’s Virgin Spring, Craven’s debut chronicled the rape and murder of a young girl, whose attackers wind up at her parents’ home and become the victims of a brutal revenge.

The attackers in Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.

Making over $3 million on a roughly $87,000 budget, Last House on the Left put Craven on the map. In 1977 Craven’s cult classic The Hills Have Eyes was released, which followed a suburban family who becomes stranded in the Nevada desert and assaulted by a family of deranged savages and was remade in 2006. Craven directed the 1982 comic book adaptation Swamp Thing (a cult favorite for… different reasons) and The Hills Have Eyes II before giving the world what would become his most enduring and immortal creation: Freddy Krueger in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Craven on set, The Hills Have Eyes, 1977.

Elm Street explored the terrifyingly thin line between dreams and reality and featured Robert Englund as the cackling homicidal Freddy, who haunts the dreams of suburban teenagers and dispatching them in increasingly grotesque and creative ways once they fall asleep. The film spawned a series of sequels (of increasingly diminished quality), a spinoff pitting two of the most iconic 1980’s slasher characters against each other (Freddy Vs. Jason), a horror anthology series for television and a 2010 remake. Freddy Krueger gained a permanent place in the American pop culture subconscious.

Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In 1986, Craven directs his first movie for a big studio (Warner Bros.), Deadly Friend, a romantic teenage horror movie that failed in the box office. Originally, the film was a sci-fi thriller without any graphic scenes, with a bigger focus on plot and character development, and a dark love story centering around the two main characters, which were not typical aspects of Craven’s previous films. After Craven’s original director’s cut was shown to a test audience, the audience criticized the lack of graphic, bloody violence and gore that Craven’s films included. Due to studio imposed re-shoots and re-editing, the film was drastically altered in post-production, losing much of the original plot and more scenes between characters, while other scenes, including bloodier deaths and a new ending, were added.

Deadly Friend, director Wes Craven, and Kristy Swanson, 1986.

Craven was involved in the lucrative Elm Street sequels up until A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, but moved on to direct episodes of the mid-80’s reboot of The Twilight Zone as well as The Serpent and the Rainbow, based on the nonfiction book about an ethnobotanist (Bill Pullman) who investigates an alleged true life case of a zombie created through Haitian Voodoo.

Bill Pulman in The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1988.

The Serpent and the Rainbow represented an attempt to move away from the slasher genre Craven helped create, and while he would follow it up with schlocky fare like the horror-comedy Shocker and the more straight-forward horror film The People Under the Stairs, Craven would revisit his signature creation with 1994’s New Nightmare. A meta-horror examination of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, New Nightmare featured the original film’s stars Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund (and Craven himself) as themselves, pitted against Freddy Krueger as attempts to enter the real world.

Ghostface in Wes Craven’s 1996 Scream.

Scream, Wes Craven, with Drew Barrymore, 1996.

In 1996, Wes Craven once again reinvented the horror genre for a new generation with Scream, a horror movie about horror movies featuring a clever, self-aware script by Kevin Williamson and – keeping with the Craven tradition of casting promising talent (like Johnny Depp in Elm Street or Sharon Stone in 1981’s Deadly Blessing) – starred the likes of Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard. Scream spawned three sequels and was recently adapted for television on MTV. The TV version of Scream has proved a hit, and has been renewed for a second season.

Craven directs Music of the Heart, 1999.

Red Eye, director Wes Craven, Rachel McAdams on set, 2005.

Paris, Je T’Aime, segment: Pere-Lachaise, directed by Wes Craven, on location, 2006.

Between directing Scream 2 and Scream 3, Craven stepped out of his main genre completely with the drama Music of the Heart, which starred Meryl Streep in an Oscar-nominated performance as an inner-city music teacher. His straight-forward thriller Red Eye was one of the highlights of his 2000’s output, as was his segment in the acclaimed French anthology film Paris je t’aime. His final two films, 2010’s My Soul to Take and 2011’s Scream 4 were less well-received, but he had several promising projects in development, such as a television adaptation of The People Under the Stairs with SyFy.

Wes Craven directing My Soul to Take (2010).

Scream 4, director Wes Craven, with Courteney Cox, on set, 2011.

Craven was a life-long nature lover and served as a member of the Audubon California Board of Directors, a conservationist society committed to restoring and protecting natural ecosystems. He is survived by his third wife Iya Labunka, his sister, children, grandchildren and stepdaughter.

Wes Craven was of the greatest American horror directors of all time, tapping into the existential terror lurking under the surface of 1980’s suburbia and time and again explored the blurry line between fantasy and reality. On the subject of the horror genre, Craven once said:

“It’s like boot camp for the psyche. In real life, human beings are packaged in the flimsiest of packages, threatened by real and sometimes horrifying dangers, events like Columbine. But the narrative form puts these fears into a manageable series of events. It gives us a way of thinking rationally about our fears.”

R.I.P. Master. You gave generations of horror fans the best kind of nightmares.

Wes Craven Filmography (only as director)

1972 – The Last House on the Left     
1977 – The Hills Have Eyes     
1978 – Stranger in Our House     (TV movie)
1981 – Deadly Blessing     
1982 – Swamp Thing     
1984 – Invitation to Hell     (TV movie)
1984 – A Nightmare on Elm Street     
1985 – Chiller     (TV movie)
1985 – The Hills Have Eyes Part II     
1985 – The Twilight Zone     (TV series, 5 episodes)
1986 – Deadly Friend     
1986 – Casebusters (Episode of anthology TV series Disneyland)
1988 – The Serpent and the Rainbow     
1989 – The People Next Door         
1989 – Shocker     
1990 – Night Visions     (TV movie)
1991 – The People Under the Stairs     
1992 – Nightmare Cafe     (TV movie)
1994 – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare     
1995 – Vampire in Brooklyn     
1995 – The Hills Have Eyes III         
1996 – Scream     
1997 – Scream 2     
1999 – Music of the Heart     
2005 – Cursed     
2005 – Red Eye     
2006 – Paris, je t’aime  (Segment: Père-Lachaise)    
2010 – My Soul to Take     
2011 – Scream 4

Source: Wikipedia and Screen Rant.

Jurabbit Park

Who framed Roger Jurabbit?

Roger Angus Dorn, is a rabbit, and plays a central role in the new triller Jurabbit Park, which is produced by Roger’s human, Matt Christensen. Roger stars in a 9 photos gallerie of him re-enacting scenes from the 1993 film Jurassic Park. More pictures of Roger on his Instagram’s Page. Source: Cute Overload.

Xanadu 35th Anniversary

A place where nobody dared to go
The love that we came to know
They call it Xanadu

And now, open your eyes and see
What we have made is real
We are in Xanadu

A million lights are dancing
And there you are, a shooting star
An everlasting world and you’re here with me
Eternally

Xanadu – Xanadu (now we are here)
In Xanadu
Xanadu – Xanadu (now we are here)
In Xanadu

Xanadu is a 1980 American romantic musical fantasy film written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel and directed by Robert Greenwald. The title is a reference to the nightclub in the film, which takes its name from Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty in China. This city appears in Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poem that is quoted in the film. The film’s plot was inspired by 1947’s Down to Earth. In that film, Rita Hayworth played the Muse Terpsichore, opposite male lead Larry Parks, who played a producer of stage plays.

Xanadu stars Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck, and Gene Kelly, and features music by Newton-John, Electric Light Orchestra, Cliff Richard, and The Tubes. The film also features an animated sequence by Don Bluth, former Disney animator for the ELO song Don’t Walk Away.

Xanadu turned 35 this month, and it seems was yesterday I went to the theater to watch this movie. Xanadu opened in theaters on August 8, 1980, and was originally conceived as a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. As a number of prominent, A-list performers joined the production, it evolved into a much larger project, while retaining rollerskating as a recurring theme, especially in the final scenes of the club’s opening night.

35 years, 35 facts about Xanadu you don’t need to know

1. Gene Kelly’s final feature film.

2. Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John’s dance number was filmed after filming had finished. Gene Kelly choreographed it. His conditions included a closed stage with only himself, Newton-John, a cameraman, a choreographer he had befriended, and two others.

3. Andy Gibb was originally cast to play Sonny.

4. After Kira tells Sonny she is one of the Greek muses, she starts to say, “My real name is Terp”, but Sonny shushes her, and she never reveals her real name. She is there to help him open a dance club, and she is obviously a dancer , so her name is most likely Terpsichore, after the Greek muse of dance.

5. Since fantasy is Xanadu‘s main theme, certain mattes, including some time-lapsed cloud effects matted over one muse’s departure along the highway, and another matted above Gene Kelly as he sits on a beach playing a clarinet, don’t look 100% realistic. This was intentional, done with the hope that the sequences would look mythical and unreal, rather than phony.

6. According to Olivia Newton-John, the script was written during filming.

7. Danny McGuire jokes “they used to have wrestling here.” In real life, the Pan Pacific Auditorium used to stage wrestling matches.

8. The choreography in the Gene Kelly-choreographed “Whenever You’re Away From Me” is nearly identical to the choreography in the song “For Me and My Gal” (the version that takes place in a coffee shop) in the 1942 film of the same name, which starred Gene Kelly and Judy Garland.

9. Olivia Newton-John turned down a role in “Can’t Stop the Music” (1980) to star in this movie.

10. The Pan Pacific Auditorium, on Beverly Boulevard, in Hollywood, near CBS’s Television City, was used for exterior shots of the Xanadu Club. It was built in 1935, and destroyed by a fire in 1989. A community center now sits on the site, featuring a single version of the Pan Pacific’s 4 curved deco spires.

11. Olivia Newton-John fractured her coccyx while filming the dance sequence “Suddenly”.

12. The soundtrack was an enormous success. The song “Magic” went to #1 on the U.S. pop singles chart. In the UK, the soundtrack album peaked at number two, and the single “Xanadu” was #1 for two weeks in July 1980.

13. Gene Kelly took the part of Danny McGuire because filming was a short drive from his Beverly Hills home.

14. John Travolta turned down the role of Sonny Malone.

15. Because “Xanadu” is an earthbound fantasy, many of the elaborate matting effects had to be successfully worked into naturalistic settings and street scenes. For example, one muse exits as a live-action tapered streak from within the metal superstructure of a large building. Robert Greenwald said “Xanadu”‘s effects were much harder than his most impressive effects in space.

16. The mural in the film was created in post-production. A digital image was superimposed over a shop in an alleyway on Dudley Avenue and Ocean Front Walk in Santa Monica, California.

17. Joel Silver, Robert Greenwald, and Victor J. Kemper wanted more elaborate special effects, but that became impossible when Universal Pictures moved the release from Christmas 1980 to summer 1980.

18. Olivia Newton-John met Matt Lattanzi, who had a minor role, during filming. Afterward, Lattanzi accompanied Newton-John to Australia on a promotional visit for “Xanadu” (1980), and met her parents. They married in 1984, had one child, Chloe Lattanzi, and divorced in 1995.

19. “Don’t Walk Away”, an animated sequence in the film, features scenes nearly identical to portions of “Thumbelina” (1994), namely a shot of a small girl walking behind a leaf. Both were directed by Don Bluth.

20. The film was meant to launch Olivia Newton-John’s career as a solo star. Due to its complete failure at the American box office, it became the one and only time she received top billing without a co-star in a theatrical release.

21. The Xanadu Roller Disco scene included 60 Xanadu Dancers.

22. The original budget was $4 million, but costs rose to $13 million. Universal head Ned Tanen fired Joel Silver, who immediately went to work for his friend and mentor Lawrence Gordon, who was also a producer on the film, and put Joel Silver back on the project.

23. This film, playing as a 99-cent double-feature with “Can’t Stop the Music” (1980), inspired John Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry Awards (a.k.a. Razzies), honoring the worst achievements in film. Robert Greenwald later won the first Worst Director Razzie Award.

24. Originally after their sunset walk, Kira and Sonny went back to Xanadu on the eve of its opening, where she sang “Suspended in Time” to him. The scene then transitioned to Sonny’s apartment, where the tune finished and Kira then revealed her true nature. This version of the song was shot and was featured in the “Making Xanadu” TV special.

25. The set of the Xanadu club cost $1,000,000 to build.

26. The title comes from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem “Kubla Khan.”

27. According to the two-page booklet included with the DVD, the film was originally conceived as a low-budget roller-disco movie. The imminent release of “Skatetown, U.S.A.” (1979) and “Roller Boogie” (1979) prompted many changes, like blending 1940s and 1980s styles.

28. Robert Greenwald’s directorial debut.

29. Olivia Newton-John’s last big-screen musical until Score: “A Hockey Musical” (2010), 30 years later. Her next film, “Two of a Kind” (1983) was not a musical, though she sang songs for the soundtrack.

30. Michael Beck didn’t have to audition for the lead in this film.

31. This film is one of three disco musicals released in 1980. The others were “The Apple” (1980) and “Can’t Stop the Music” (1980).

32. The word Xanadu is spoken 21 times in the last song.

33. Gene Kelly’s character Danny McGuire has the same name as his character in “Cover Girl” (1944).

34. Joe Mantegna was in the film’s cast, but the scenes he appeared in were deleted.

35. Sandahl Bergman (“Conan, the Barbariun”, 1982) played one of the Muses. The other Muses are played by Lynn Latham, Melinda Phelps, Cherise Bate, Juliette Marshall, Marilyn Tokuda, Yvette Van Voorhees and Teri Beckerman.

Source: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Updated: Star Trek: Renegades, a fan film

Note: I’m very proudly to say that according to WordPress this is my 500th post on this blog. All That I Love started on May 2011, and it was a long way of learning and hard work to know how to make a blog as good as possible but I guess I’m in the right way. I know it there’s a long journey ahead but this is a great mark for All That Love, and I hope to get to 1000 posts very soon. Thanks for all followers and visitors of All That I Love. Now, to infinite and beyond!

Space, the final frontier

When you think of “film made by fans” based on some TV show or movie, immediately you picture a backyard production, starring teenagers, film students and amateur actors wearing costumes made by hand, in cardboard sets and effects produced in a makeshift studio in a garage or basement. Most so-called “fan films” really are like that, following the maxim “an idea in his head, a camera in hand.”

Fortunately, this is not the case for Star Trek: Renegades. The film was produced by passionate fans of Star Trek who joined their love for the series created by Gene Roddenbery with the highest degree of professionalism to create a high quality product, able to satisfy the most loyal fans of the original series and at the same time those who do not distinguish a Vulcan of a Klingon.

Written by Jack Trevino and directed by Tim Russ, Star Trek: Renegades cost about $ 375,000 to be produced (a real dab in movie budgets made by fans) and uses modern film techniques and enough good visual effects to allow the film to draw the attention of any production company or broadcaster able to transforming the original idea into a pilot for a new TV series based on the Star Trek universe.

Boldly going where no Trek has gone before

Star Trek: Renegades is an unlicensed and unofficial fan film based upon the Star Trek franchise, although it features several characters from commercially produced Star Trek played by the same actors who realized them for film and TV, who in some cases are reprising their former roles as  Walter Koenig cast as Admiral Pavel Chekov and Robert Picardo as Dr. Lewis Zimmerman who is the developer of the Emergency Medical Hologram. The story concerns a group of criminals and misfits assembled to undertake a covert mission when suspicion arises that the official military chain of command has been compromised by enemy agents. The film was largely funded through crowdsourcing, and the film’s producers claimed they were going to submit it to CBS as a spec TV pilot.

It’s ten years after the starship Voyager’s return from the Delta Quadrant, and the Federation is in a crisis. The Federation’s main suppliers of dilithium crystals (the primary catalyst for the fuel used in faster-than-light travel) are disappearing. Space and time have folded around several planets, isolating them from outside contact. The phenomenon is unnatural – someone or something is causing it to happen. The need to stop this necessitates drastic measures; some of which are outside the Federation’s normal jurisdiction. For this, Admiral Pavel Chekov, head of Starfleet Intelligence, turns to Commander Tuvok, Voyager’s former security officer and current head of the newly reorganized Section 31, Starfleet’s autonomous intelligence and defense organization. Tuvok must put together a new covert, renegade crew – mostly outcasts and rogues – and even criminals. This new crew is tasked with finding out what is causing the folding of time and space, and stopping it at all costs. But will they be able to put aside their differences and stop trying to kill one another in time to accomplish their mission?

The team behind Renegades had previously produced the fan film Star Trek: Of Gods and Men (click here to watch the full movie on YouTube). The film was shot at Laurel Canyon Studios in Los Angeles, utilizing green screen techniques. Principal photography commenced on October 2, 2013 and was completed on October 16, 2013 in Los Angeles. The premise for Renegades originated on the final day of the Of Gods and Men shoot. Jack Trevino made the suggestion of a series where the cast had to work outside of the boundaries of Starfleet. Writer Ethan Calk later credited this as being the origins of the idea. The production team announced plans for three possible outcomes from the film: CBS picks it up for a series; it is made into a stand-alone film; or it would be the first episode of an Internet based series.Source text: Wikipedia.

Read more about Star Trek: Renegades on IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2621446/. Watch the official trailer on YouTube:

Click here to know the artists behind the production and the visual effects used in the movie. Buy the original Blu-Ray or DVD if you are a real Trekker and help to keep the project alive. Support Renegades Team making a donate directly from the project’s official website and receive the digital download of the movie poster, access to exclusive web content, the digital download of the film, plus a Blu-Ray or DVD of Star Trek: Renegades.

Updated on August 31: Star Trek: Renegades full movie is now available on the Renegades Channel on YouTube. Live long and prosper!

SW EVII Heroes & Villains take Empire Magazine’s cover

Star Wars is Disney’s flagship property of 2015 and very understandably so. Lucasfilm and the Star Wars brand is the company’s biggest acquisition since Marvel and we’re only a few months away from the next chapter in the saga hitting theaters – one that’s almost 40 years in the making. Disney and Lucasfilm, alongside the cast (new and old) stole the show at this year’s Star Wars Celebration, San Diego Comic-Con, and Disney D23 events, among others, to promote Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens – in addition to spinoffs, sequels, merchandise and even theme park expansions – while somehow keeping story details close the vest.

And now the new heroes and villains are stealing the cover(s) of Empire Magazine. Let’s take a closer look at The Resistance and The First Order, the new embattled factions in the galaxy 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi.

Empire shared one of their two variant covers for next Thursday’s issue of the magazine. The exclusive, fold-out covers give readers a choice to make when picking up the issue: the light side or the dark. The first image features the new trio of villains: the crossguard lightsaber-wielding Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the young General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and the mighty chrome Stormtrooper Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

Note the location set within the hangar bay of future version of an Imperial Star Destroyer, complete with updated Tie Fighters and Stormtroopers. Released later via Empire’s Twitter account is the second variant cover, featuring – as we suspected – the trio of new heroes. Sorry, no Luke Skywalker official reveal just yet:

From the left, we have Stormtrooper-turned-lightsaber-wielder Finn (John Boyega), the desert scavenger from Jakku, Rey (Daisy Ridley), and ace X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). New droid BB-8 and the iconic Millennium Falcon make an appearance as well. The imagery and details reveal nothing new but highlight the new characters we’ll follow along throughout the next trilogy of Star Wars movies.

All we need now is a third variant cover (perhaps closer to the film’s December release date?) featuring the original trio of heroes: Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Luke (Mark Hamill) alongside Chewbacca and returning droids C3PO and R2-D2. Empire preview issue hits shelves Thursday 27 August.

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens hits theaters on December 18, 2015, followed by Star Wars: Rogue One on December 16, 2016, Star Wars: Episode VIII on May 26, 2017, and the Han Solo Star Wars film on May 25, 2018. Star Wars: Episode IX is expected to reach theaters in 2019, followed by the third Star Wars standalone film in 2020.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: J.J. Abrams explains what’s in a name

Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) finally return this holiday to help continue the Star Wars saga more than three decades after they helped eliminate the second Death Star at the conclusion of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. And they’ll be joined by friends and enemies, new and old, from Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C3PO, to a wealth of fresh faces set to lead the way through the next three episodic installments.

Thanks to Lucasfilm making appearances at events including Star Wars Celebration and Comic-Con International throughout the year, we finally know (officially) who’s playing who in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens when it comes to new cast members, but there’s more to it than that. Each new character name is important, especially knowing how iconic the names of the original trilogy characters became. Some hint at the larger lore of the growing Star Wars universe while others tease mysterious connections to what came before.

In a cover story interview with Star Wars 7 director J.J. Abrams, EW has helped to break down what went into the creation and naming of the new lead characters from a galaxy far, far away.

The Force Awakens Characters Guide

Finn and Rey

Of all the new characters leading the third trilogy of the Star Wars saga, the two most notable stars of the marketing materials and event appearances thus far don’t yet have their full names revealed. Daisy Ridley is playing Rey and John Boyega is playing Finn. We know the former is a scavenger living on the desert planet Jakku who meets an ex-Stormtrooper named Finn and together they eventually cross paths with Han Solo and Chewbacca. The pair represent the new heroes on this journey.

But there’s more to these two and their involvement in the saga but details remain clouded in typical J.J. Abrams-style mystery. The last names of Finn and Rey are being held back with reason says Abrams, fueling speculation that one or both are connected to characters we already know in the lore. “I will only say about that that it is completely intentional that their last names aren’t public record.”

Poe Dameron

If Rebel Alliance ace pilot Wedge Antilles was a lead character in the original trilogy, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron would be his replacement in Episodes 7-9. Dameron is one of the three new lead heroes set to be introduced in The Force Awakens but his name isn’t integral to the story or tied to classic characters, and no, it’s also not a nod to Nicolas Cage’s Con-Air protagonist Cameron Poe.

“Poe Dameron” is simply a familiar sounding name to J.J. Abrams and is partly derived from the last name of his assistant, Morgan Dameron. The name Poe Dameron, especially the first name, was at first temporary but it sort of stuck. As it turns out, Poe happens to be the name of Abrams’ daughter’s toy polar bar too.

BB-8

BB-8, the lovable gyro droid that fully functions practically and is based on Ralph McQuarrie’s original Star Wars design art, is poised to be the new generation’s R2-D2, dome head and all. Just like fans met R2 after he and C3P0 crash-landed on the desert planet Tatooine, so to will fans meet BB-8 on another desert planet known as Jakku.

As for the BB-8 droid designation, this one was an easy one that just stuck from the beginning for J.J. Abrams. No other names were considered according to the director. “I named him BB-8 because it was almost onomatopoeia. It was sort of how he looked to me, with the 8, obviously, and then the 2 B’s.”

General Hux

The most mysterious character of the main cast of Star Wars: Episode VII was that of Domhnall Gleeson’s. Is he a hero, a villain, neither or both? Gleeson is actually playing an officer – a young General – in the remnants of the Empire, now known as The First Order. He’s in a position of power but how he got there so young and what he plans to do with his fleet and armies remains a mystery.

His name isn’t a mystery however – it just popped up while Abrams and screenwriter Lawrence “Larry” Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) were talking story ideas. They sometimes did this in cemeteries as well, looking at the last names of the deceased. “Larry and I would walk all over the place when we were breaking the story, and we would record our conversations. We were walking through a cemetery that’s near the Bad Robot offices, and we would often, as we were talking about characters, sort of just be glancing at names to see if any of them stuck. I don’t believe that Hux came from there, but it may have.”

Captain Phasma

Gwendoline Christie, who plays fan-favorite warrior Brienne of Tarth on HBO’s Game of Thrones, suits up in another cool suit of armor for her role in the Star Wars universe – a chrome variant of the iconic Stormtrooper armor. Christie plays the mighty Captain Phasma of The First Order who’s yet to be seen without her helm. She’s a hunter reportedly seeking out Finn for defecting.

Phasma’s name, according to Abrams, comes from the Phantasm horror movie series and was chosen simply because “Phasma sounds really cool.” Abrams shares a connection to Angus Scrimm who plays The Tall Man in all four Phantasm films (and the upcoming fifth installment) from working with him on several episodes of Alias.

Kylo Ren

The name Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is actually an acquired one in the story, hinting that the villainous character’s real name is important to the larger Star Wars mythos. Cue the Han or Luke offspring theories.

“Ren” is actually a clan name of sorts for a new faction set to be introduced in Star Wars 7 dubbed the Knights of Ren. Who they are and how they fit into the Star Wars saga going forward remains a mystery. If Kylo’s introduction via marketing materials thus far is of any indication though, the Knights of Ren seem to have Sith connections and perhaps are comprised of force-sensitive warriors. Kylo Ren’s unique crossguard lightsaber is something he constructs himself.

Source: ScreenRant and Enterteinment Weekly.