Empire unveils Luke and Rey on its Star Wars: The Last Jedi cover

UK film mag Empire has unveiled a new look at Luke Skywalker and his (hopefully) soon-to-be protege Rey from its October issue.

All holographic and stuff, the Jedi master and former scavenger from Jakku done good appear back to back, and ready to do battle with the First Order.

There’s also a debut of Poe Dameron’s new ship, an X-Wing fighter which is codenamed Black One.

“The X-Wing (an Incom-FreiTek T-70, to be precise) has, according to Rian Johnson, been specially modified by Resistance engineers, with a temporary accelerator pod affixed to the aft section,” it reads.

“According to The Last Jedi director, the pod, when primed, increases Dameron’s speed, allowing him to outrun First Order cannon emplacements. It’s just a temporary boost and will burn out quickly but it’s enough to get beyond the barrage of turbo laser fire from First Order Star Destroyers such as the one depicted in the image.”

It looks pretty smart.

Rian Johnson also spills on Supreme Leader Snoke and Kylo Ren:

“We got the whole story of Palpatine’s rise to power in the prequels, but in the original films he’s exactly what he needs to be, which is just ‘The Emperor’,” he says.

“He’s a dark force: the scary thing behind the thing. That was entirely how I approached Snoke. I wasn’t interested in explaining where he came from or telling his history, except where it serves this story.

“Writing Kylo Ren is just so much fun. Star Wars boils down to the transition from adolescence into adulthood. That’s the heart of these films and Rey is most obviously the one that hangs on. But it’s also Kylo. In the originals you project entirely onto Luke, while Vader is the scary other — he’s the minotaur.

“The fascinating thing about Kylo and Rey is that they’re two sides of something. We can all relate to Kylo: to that anger of being in the turmoil of adolescence and figuring out who he’s going to be as a man; dealing with anger and wanting to separate from his family. He’s not Vader — at least, he’s not Vader yet — and that’s something I really wanted to get into.”

The magazine hits newsstands on Thursday.

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