Trust JJ Abrams to pull off a bit of misdirection. The director currently at the helm of a little low-budget indie going by the working title of Star Wars Episode VII continues to drip feed little titbits of information like it just isn’t even a big deal at all.
Take this video, for example. Wherein Abrams gives an update on the burgeoning Star Wars: Force for Change project – a charity-based initiative from Disney, Lucasarts and Bad Robot aimed at raising funds and awareness for UNICEF‘s Innovation Labs, which aims to find new and innovative methods of aiding children in need.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? It is until you realise that Abrams just so happens to be standing in front of a full-size X-Wing Fighter that will seemingly appear in the upcoming film. And now brains are exploding.
The X-Wing is, of course, the all-purpose Rebel fighter popularised in the original trilogy by the true hero of the alliance Wedge Antilles (and also some snot-nosed punk farm boy with no respect for rank called Luke Skytrotter or Cloudwalker or something like that).
And before everyone gets uppity about the fact that it kind of doesn’t really look like the X-Wing’s you remember, I’d like to remind you that this is the internet, and thus that argument has already happened and has been answered.
@CDCanimation It is in fact an Episode VII X-wing, not a Z-95.
— Star Wars (@starwars) July 21, 2014
These are the creative luxuries afforded to you when you just go right ahead and do away with four decades of extended universe canon.
