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Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens just got a dose of Indonesian ass-kicking. If Star Wars fans were excited by the initial Force Awakens trailer, then they better strap in for what director JJ Abrams has in store after he cast Iko Uwai, the star of 2014's epic ass-kicking fest The Raid 2, for a role in the upcoming sci-fi epic. Alongside fellow newcomers John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Gwendoline Christie, Lupita Nyong'o, Domhnal Gleeson and Adam Driver, Uwai will also join franchise holdovers Harrison Ford, Mark Hammil and Carrrie Fisher in the film, which is due out in December 2015.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Abrams has cast Uwai and Raid 2 co-stars Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman for "fight work" in the upcoming blockbuster.
As TwitchFilm — who first reported the news — say, "We have no word yet on what their characters may be, which side of the good guy / bad guy line they fall upon or whether any will survive through until the subsequent pictures."
Holy crap they just cast The Raid's Iko Uwais in Star Wars: The Force Awakens!!!...*changes underwear* pic.twitter.com/MrGZqnKdMa
— Rahul Kohli (@RahulKohli13) January 5, 2015
The practical effects of hiring the martial artists — seriously, have you seen what they did in The Raid and The Raid 2 — for fight work makes it seem like Abrams will be going for a grittier, more frenetic style of shooting and fighting.
That appears to be in keeping with JJ Abrams' approach to special effects, steering a bit wider of CGI and green screen than franchise creator and prequel-screwerer-upperer George Lucas. As Episode VIII director Rian Johnson revealed, "They're doing so much practical building for this one. It's awesome," he told the Girls in Hoodies podcast, as reported by Tech Times. "I think people are coming back around to [practical effects]. It feels like there is sort of that gravity pulling us back toward it. I think that more and more people are hitting kind of a critical mass in terms of the CG-driven action scene lending itself to a very specific type of action scene, where physics go out the window and it becomes so big so quick."
It echoes the statements from LucasFilm boss Kathleen Kennedy who, as per The Guardian, told a Star Wars Celebration Convention that "We're looking at what the early Star Wars films did; they used real locations with special effects. So [for Episode VII] we're going to find some very cool locations, [and] we're going to end up using every single tool in the toolbox."
What do you think? Are you excited for the fighting scenes and effects Iko and co will be involved in? And just for the hell of it, here's the trailer again!
