Undertaking a Reckless Adventure

There are only two people in the entire galaxy who've blown up a Death Star.  Sadly, only one of them will be appearing in the new Star Wars movie.  That one is Luke Skywalker.  The other, the charming scoundrel Lando Calrissian, will not be joining the cast, which was released earlier this week.  Along with Mark Hamill as Luke, Carrie Fischer will be returning as Leia, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Kenny Baker as R2-D2.  Among the newcomers, the only one I recognized is Andy Serkis, who is a motion-capture extraordinaire, known for his role as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies, and more recently, as Caesar in the newest Planet of the Apes movies.  With a release date set for December 18th, 2015, we have a while to wait before seeing how it'll all turn out, but hopefully they'll keep some of the things and techniques that made the first ones great.

(photo collected from buzzfeed, blog.thaeger, theguardian, and starwarsarchives)