‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: New Characters and Details Revealed

Since today was Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be With You), there were a bunch of new details about ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ released as a surprise….

The cast of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ will soon grace the cover of Vanity Fair magazine and as part of the Star Wars day celebration on Monday, the magazine released several new images from the movie as well as details about some of the new characters.

Let’s start with Adam Driver, who has been rumored for months to be the new big bad in the Star Wars universe taking over from the Emperor and Darth Vader. Well it was all true!

He plays a character (seen in the picture above) named Kylo Ren — and he’s the leader of the evil First Order (more on that in a second). As you can see in the photo, he’s leading some snowtroopers on a mission at the secret base where the Galactic Empire fled after their final battle with the Rebel Alliance in ‘Return of the Jedi’. There’s no name for the planet they’re inhabiting, but it looks an awful lot like Hoth.

It was also confirmed on Monday that Kylo Ren was the hooded bad guy in the original ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ teaser trailer that’s carrying a new three-pronged lightsaber.

Lupita Nyong’s character was also revealed and her name is Maz Kanata, but there’s a catch with her role — she’s actually playing a motion capture alien that we haven’t seen yet. Maz is a pirate, but we don’t know going into the film if she’s on the side of the Rebel Alliance or the Empire.

Speaking of that….

In the new film ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, the Rebel Alliance is now known as The Resistance while the remnants of the Galactic Empire are now called The First Order.

As previously revealed, Oscar Isaac will be playing daring X-Wing fighter pilot Poe Dameron while Daisy Ridley plays a new heroine named Rey. There’s still no confirmation on her last name but something tells me she’ll be rolling Solo a lot during this movie.

Check out the brief behind the scenes photoshoot for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ before the new issue of Vanity Fair lands on news stands. All photos are also courtesy of Vanity Fair/Annie Leibovitz