Star Wars Weekly: Star Wars Celebration Anaheim and Kylo Ren the editor

Time again for STAR WARS WEEKLY, the SYFY WIRE series that rounds up the most important news of the week from a galaxy far, far away. Think of us as your own personal Star Wars Holocron.

STAR WARS CELEBRATION 2020

The dates for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim have been announced, with Disney and Lucasfilm revealing that the next convention will take place in August 2020, from the 27th through the 30th.

Tickets go on sale June 21, as do reservations for hotels. Make sure you snag tickets quickly, as they went fast last time. The hotel rooms might even be the more important thing to worry about.

And then you have to think about the biggest question: Are you going to head to Disneyland to visit Galaxy’s Edge before the convention? Or after?

EDITING THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

At a screening of Star Trek, Maryann Brandon, the editor of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, dropped some interesting tidbits about the challenges facing that film and how they had to edit during the production. This is something other films have done in the past, but it’s a process that J.J. Abrams was apparently reticent to adopt. Unfortunately, the time crunch on The Rise of Skywalker meant that he didn’t have much of a choice.

Brandon felt the process went well, as she discusses in this Q&A.

The best part about this is when Brandon recalls the time that Adam Driver, in his full Kylo Ren costume, wanted to watch her edit. “There was this great moment where I'm sitting there cutting and I'm in the headphones," Brandon said to the audience, "and my assistant is walking towards me and she's laughing. She says turn around and I turn around and Kylo Ren — in full mask and cape — is sitting on an apple box just over me. And he's like, 'Do you mind if I watch?'"

EMMA THOMPSON WANTS TO BE IN STAR WARS

Emma Thompson wants to be in Star Wars and really we should let her.

Doesn’t she have the best accent to play an Imperial officer? We need a competent, high-level Imperial officer villain that’s also a woman, don’t we? It feels like it’s about time for that and she’d be perfect in the role.

Why she hasn’t been in a Star Wars movie probably comes down to the idea that there hasn’t been a part right for her, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hope for the future.

COLIN TREVORROW’S INFLUENCE ON GALAXY’S EDGE

Speaking to Collider, Colin Trevorrow, who was originally going to be directing The Rise of Skywalker before Disney replaced him with Abrams, revealed that some of the work he did on that film ended up in Galaxy’s Edge. “The Imagineering team asked us to develop a new ship for the park while we were designing the film," he said to Collider. "I took it pretty seriously — it’s not every day you get to be a part of something like that."

That ship became the TIE Echelon, something that Trevorrow describes as the First Order equivalent of a Blackhawk stealth helicopter.

When asked if this ship is going to be featured in a sequence of the film, Trevorrow hedged and maintained his secrecy. There’s no telling if any of that design work from early iterations of Episode IX will make their way into The Rise of Skywalker.

You can see the TIE Echelon at Galaxy’s Edge right now. The Rise of Skywalker opens in December.

MAGIC AT GALAXY’S EDGE

Galaxy’s Edge is nothing short of magic. You really need to see it to believe it, but videos like this are popping up and really highlighting the magic of the place.

This is a 16-minute compilation of Rey taking young children by the hand and leading them on adventures around the park to avoid First Order troopers.

The looks on their faces and the magic this brings is beyond anything I could have imagined. I can only wish I had something like this when I was a kid.

But the kids today have it. And that’s something to be happy about.

Until next week: May the Force be with you!