Cinema Talk

Soon you can finish what Darth Vader started, slipping into Kylo Ren’s virtual mask when the augmented-reality game Star Wars: Jedi Challenges launches its new Dark Side Expansion.

The free update coming to the popular Lenovo AR experience this November allows players to turn to the dark side, facing off to duel real friends or virtual foes like Rey, Jedi Master Yoda, and more.

And for those who feel the pull to the darkness, the designers have crafted a special limited-edition controller fashioned after the unstable red-bladed cross-guard lightsaber carried by the First Order’s Kylo Ren.

StarWars.com recently spoke with Jonathan Hsu, a senior mechanical engineer for Disney, and Seth Davis, director of product management at Disney, to talk about the challenges of bringing the fallen son of Han and Leia to life through his unique and decidedly inelegant weapon.

‘Mashed together’

When the original Star Wars: Jedi Challenges with the Lenovo Mirage AR headset came out last year, the first controller was a lightsaber handle modeled after the one carried by Rey. “We really wanted to go for the iconic sabers,” Hsu says.

“Once you’ve made one lightsaber that’s exciting, you start to think about what other cool lightsabers and characters you can do,” Davis adds. Snoke’s pupil seemed an obvious choice, both for his placement in the sequel trilogy and the incredibly stylized look of his weapon. But was the design team up for the challenge? “The original question was: could we even do it?” Davis says.

Mass-producing a lightsaber that still looks shiny and new is one thing, but Kylo’s mangled weapon, complete with battle scars and exposed wiring, is far more intricate and labor intensive. “It’s harder to make it look like it’s been used than it is to make it look like it’s brand new, so that was the big challenge,” Davis says.

”Kylo’s saber is quite different than Rey’s,” Hsu adds. “One, it’s very worn down, but two, it’s kind of this mashed together piece of hardware.” That presents challenges for injection molding, plus the added decorative elements. “There’s a balance between ‘How can we produce one that would do the actual Kylo saber justice’ but also if we can afford to do it justice and keep it affordable.”

Distinctly damaged

Hsu and his team studied images of the original prop used for filming and used a 3D printer to create a prototype base that Hsu then painted and weathered by hand, systematically scratching down layers of paint and adding scuffs, dings, and damage to match the real thing.

Hsu didn’t just want to mimic the look of Kylo’s weapon — he wanted it to feel authentic. The final effect is perfect “for those folks that really want a premium saber and to have that taste of feeling what it’s like to wield Kylo’s saber and be on the dark side,” Davis adds.

That meant honing in on details, like the snaking trail of exposed wiring running up the hilt, and making it an actual wire, not a molded piece of plastic. “On a lot of the sabers that we end up doing…that wire is usually something that’s molded on there,” Davis says. “But in this case it’s really a wire.

“I just kind of love the size and heft of that. It feels really different from the first saber we did and that’s one of the things I like about it…it really does feel and look distinct.”

After exhaustive meetings to ensure each slight mark and scuff was just right and the added challenge of making software that would ensure the lateral plasma vents, or exhaust ports, seen in the virtual platform matched the physical controller in hand, it was time to test both together.

Watching Kylo Ren’s lightsaber leap to life in his hands was “magical,” Davis says. “To see the thing that you’re holding in your hand sort of come to life, it’s just a different feel. It’s a totally different saber. It feels really powerful.”

The effect perfectly captured what it’s like to wield Kylo’s unstable blade, “but in this case you’re holding it in your own hands and that was a pretty satisfying experience to see that come to life,” Davis says.

For more on the Dark Side Expansion and the limited-edition Kylo Ren Lightsaber controller, go to JediChallenges.com.

Associate Editor Kristin Baver is a writer and all-around sci-fi nerd who always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s not. Do you know a fan who’s most impressive? Hop on Twitter and tell @KristinBaver all about them!

TAGS: dark side, Kylo Ren (Star Wars), Lightsaber, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges

There were two times Joe Walsh felt part of a community. The first was as a student at Kent State, but that all went away after the National Guard shooting. The second was when he got to LA and met a bunch of other musicians, including Don Henley and Glenn Frey, and that almost went away in a haze of substance abuse. Joe talks with Marc about his days with The James Gang, opening for The Who, Led Zeppelin, and every band under the sun, joining The Eagles, breaking up with The Eagles, getting sober, and going back on tour with the Eagles after Glenn's death. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace and Starbucks Doubleshot.

After an autopsy ruled Kim Porter's Nov. 15 death as "deferred" and "pending investigation," on Friday (Jan. 25),  the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner revealed the cause of her death as lobar pneumonia. The matter of the death was natural.

Following her death, Porter was buried in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia, where she was remembered by her family, friends and Diddy -- the father of three of her four children. She was 47.

"She loved to dance," he wrote in remembrance of Porter shortly after her passing. "Thank you to everybody for your prayers and support. God is the greatest. He woke you up to see another day. Please don’t take it for granted. Let’s go people."

Diddy's ex, Cassie, echoed his sentiments and had glowing praise for the former model and actress."There are no words. An amazing mother to her beautiful family, lit up every room she entered and now the most beautiful angel," she said. "Sending so much love and my condolences to the Porter and Combs families."

Today Freeform announced that it has picked up the PARTY OF FIVE reboot to series. The original show creators, Amy Lippman and Chris Keyser, are set to serve as executive producers and writers for the 10 episode first season. The network says that “the one-hour drama will follow the five Acosta children (fka Buendia) as they navigate daily life struggles to survive as a family unit after their parents are suddenly deported to Mexico. The series stars Brandon Larracuente as Emilio, Emily Tosta as Lucia, Niko Guardado as Beto and Elle Paris Legaspi as Valentina.”

“’Party of Five’ embodies the heart and soul of what it means to be a family in the most trying of times. We’re so lucky that Freeform gets to be the home for this reimagined story, as we continue to represent the resilience of young adults and the importance of fighting for your voice in times of doubt,” said Tom Ascheim, president, Freeform. “We are thrilled to be able to share the groundbreaking storytelling from Amy and Chris with a new audience, and are excited for our viewers to discover the beauty of this series.”

Armin (Hans Löw), the lanky slacker with a bad goatee at the center of Ulrich Kohler’s In My Room, is something of an anti-protagonist, a void of charisma around which a plot transpires. Our introduction to him comes in the form of video footage of a German election that he shot for the local cable station where he works. In it, the bumping-and-jolting camera keeps strangely cutting whenever a politician is about to deliver a speech, slowly revealing itself as evidence of a gaffe. He sheepishly explains his error to his colleagues, who’ve clearly dealt with such negligence before, and receives only a mocking demonstration of the difference between “on” and “off.” Later, we see him botching a potential one-night-stand, and when the disinterested young woman has to re-enter his cramped apartment to claim her forgotten bag, she walks right by his half-naked body as if he weren’t even there.

In soberly observing this man’s drearily prosaic day-to-day life for the first third of the rather protracted In My Room, Kohler risks our immediate disengagement. Even when Armin leaves Berlin for the suburbs, where his bedridden grandmother’s (Ruth Bickelhaupt) encroaching death hints at possible dramatic conflict between him and his family, the director keeps the pulse low and the tone muted, with Armin’s arguments with his father (Michael Wittenbom) over the best nursing methods amounting to little more than mild disagreements. Armin drinks beer, but it’s not like he’s trying to chase away any inner demons. Rather, he seems like a guy who’s just coasting through life, alienated from the post-collegiate working world he’s fashioned for himself, unhappy with his “little cash-flow problem,” and hopelessly short on meaningful relationships but too passive to change anything.

The studied banality of Kohler’s approach—no score, undramatic lighting, very few close-ups—combined with Armin’s essential diffidence generates a subtle underlying air of suspense, a suspicion that the narrative could feasibly could go anywhere from the seeming impasse at which it begins. It turns out that this is by design, since the ensuing plot gambit is meant to be received as a shock to the system, both for the audience and for Armin. After a night spent ambling around and trying to visit his mother, Armin wakes up to find that all of humanity has apparently vanished, due to no evident calamity of any sort. Here, In My Room becomes an unforeseen—at least for those who haven’t read the synopsis—riff on the last-man-on-Earth sci-fi subgenre, albeit one that skirts depicting a sensational show of survivalism at every step in favor of something more oddly tranquil. In this sense, it joins other films of the so-called “Berlin School,” like Western and Toni Erdmann, in embodying the trappings of a specific populist genre if only to casually subvert them.

What’s different is that, whereas those films steered away from melodramatic flourishes to burrow deep into their characters’ states of mind, In My Room often exhibits an interest only in the accruing of incidents, giving it a this-happens-then-this-happens quality that defiantly eschews psychological shading. The effect is hypnotic at first: Armin’s initial encounters with a world now empty of human life have a shell-shocked stillness that gives way slowly to giddy catharsis, with this mope suddenly and unexpectedly ripping it down a forsaken thoroughfare in a Lamborghini as the camera takes in a view from the front bumper—a rare jolt of adrenaline that suggests Kohler might be a Need for Speed nut. But as the months start passing unceremoniously, with hard cuts disguising ellipses that fast-forward dramatically through Armin’s time in isolation, it’s hard not to feel like Kohler is evading some of the most fruitful opportunities to explore his main character’s psyche. How does Armin go from being an ineffectual nobody to a ripped Robinson Crusoe-esque figure overseeing a virtual Noah’s Ark of livestock, and what emotional and logistical hurdles needed to be usurped to get there?

It’s possible to appreciate Armin’s solo trajectory as an academic articulation of fundamental human adaptability, whereby Kohler seems to posit an anti-capitalist worldview in which some are far more capable of fulfillment when stripped of societal structures rather than burdened by them. Alas, In My Room becomes far more engaging when it throws yet another twist into the works, this time with the arrival of Kirsi (Elena Radonicich), the assertive Eve to Armin’s laidback Adam. Again, Kohler thwarts expectations: Armin and Kirsi begin looking after each other, collaborating on food gathering and other quotidian necessities, and, inevitably, fucking, but stirrings of romance are kept cautiously at bay. Where films like Into the Wild and Cast Away seem settled on the idea that human connection is at the very least a sanity barometer if not a survival imperative, In My Room walks a delicate line between showcasing the fruits of Armin and Kirsi’s compulsory partnership and arguing for Armin’s essential inadequacy as a social being.

As the two survivors grow closer, Kohler’s detached camera finally moves in, indulging a few strategically timed closeups that, instead of offering long-delayed emotional catharsis, only add to the layers of ambivalence surrounding the nature of this pairing. At a point when Armin, in a more conventional drama, might have been most legible to us as a character, he’s suddenly rendered impossibly remote and beguiling, while the woman who’s just entered his life becomes the film’s most transparent figure. In a parting shot that evokes The Mirror—one of a few whiffs of Tarkovsky that perfume this otherwise decidedly unshowy film—the divide between the two is visualized as irreconcilable, though the film’s lingering impression is hardly one of despair. This piquant mix of emotions makes In My Room worth its plodding stretches, but it’s hard not feel as though these passages comprise little more than a convoluted vehicle to get to their eventual end point. 

Juice WRLD has signed a global publishing administration agreement with BMG, the company announced on Friday (Nov. 16).

The deal will handle the Chicago-bred rapper's full catalog, including his critically acclaimed debut album, Goodbye & Good Riddance, which featured the chart-topping single "Lucid Dreams," and his joint project with Future, Future & Juice WRLD Present...WRLD ON DRUGS. 

The deal will also include all future releases from the rapper, as well as his newest single, "Armed and Dangerous," which was released earlier this month.