Dear Gossips,
Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens in three weeks. We’re getting close. And I’m getting pretty pumped. Once Thanksgiving is over in America, they’ll be making their final marketing push before the release. Yesterday they started reporting the early box office projections. Right now, The Last Jedi is tracking to open with $200 million on its first weekend. Tracking, as you know, is sometimes way off. For example, Justice League was supposed to bring in around $110 million on its first week – and, well, that didn’t happen. That said, Star Wars is not Justice League. There’s no doubt the movie will make a f-ck-tonne of money. The question is HOW MUCH money?
This week’s Entertainment Weekly is all about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with several different covers featuring several different characters. Luke and Leia are paired. Rey and Kylo Ren are paired. Finn and Rose are paired. And the galaxy’s internet boyfriend, Poe Dameron, played by Oscar Isaac, is paired with Vice Admiral Holdo, played by Laura Dern, who’s just joined the Star Wars world. This is the feature I’m most excited by. Because VA Holdo is the new leader of the Resistance. She’s assertive and strategic and glamourous and Poe doesn’t know if he can trust her because he might be judging her by her appearance.
“She doesn’t particularly look like your typical military leader, and so I think there’s a bit of distrust for Poe,” Isaac says. “He’s not sure what to make of her, and then the way she speaks, the things she says.”
And he’s not alone. Many others in the Resistance also lack confidence in their new leader. The question is whether she can win over the battle-weary warriors.
The actress says this part of the storyline relates to our own world. Holdo represents “stereotypes about women bosses,” Dern says. “Like if she looks a certain way, she can’t achieve the job or she must be brazen. You know, all the different versions of what we label someone. I mean, there are reasons why I might look the way I look.”
“I think it’s beautifully subversive,” Dern says of Holdo’s military glamour. “From the director to the producers, everyone was painstaking about not only the look, but even the exact color of hair, what it should be and trying different versions. And all I know is I think it’s so cool. I love the way she looks…. I want to be Holdo for Halloween.”
The actress laughs. “Does that just seem horrific and narcissistic? I get a free pass.”
That’s a very Holdo attitude, too. The admiral barges in and doesn’t care what people think, or whether she’s welcomed or meets approval. She’s headstrong, but not necessarily wrong. “Sometimes you need somebody to show up and yeah, teach you a thing or two,” Dern says.
Is Star Wars subtly addressing gender differences in the workplace? Will Poe Dameron become a stand-in for how society unfairly limits opportunities for women at work, criticising women for possessing attributes that would be welcomed in men?
Click here to read more from Laura and Oscar about Star Wars: The Last Jedi at EW.com. From there you can find links to the other three cover stories. I can’t believe that famewhore BB8 didn’t get profiled this time. He must be so pissed.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
