8 Major New Details Revealed About Star Wars: The Force Awakens

5. Kylo Ren's Ties To Darth Vader

No doubt one of the most intriguing pieces of imagery in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer was the charred remains of Darth Vader's helmet. Leaked concept art showed a mysterious figure with a cybernetic hand - and possibly face- looking wistfully at it, and it sounds as if that might have been Kylo Ren. Whether he'll look that messed up beneath his own mask remains to be seen (that could have been an entirely different character after all), but his appearance has been confirmed as being inspired by the now dead Sith Lord . Despite the fact that Vader was gone long before Kylo was born, he's described as something of a "Vader obsessive", and Abrams promises that "The movie explains the origins of the mask and where it€™s from, but the design was meant to be a nod to the Vader mask. Ren is well aware of what€™s come before, and that€™s very much a part of the story of the film." While this obsession sheds at least some light on the villain's motivations, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan makes it clear that this Sith is a fair bit different to not only the man he idolises, but pretty much every other good or bad guy to have been introduced in this franchise to date! "I€™ve written four Star Wars movies now, and there€™s never been a character quite like the one that Adam plays. I think you€™re going to see something that€™s brand new to the saga," he says, before teasing: "He€™s full of emotion..." One part of Ren's arsenal which doesn't appear to be inspired by Vader or anything else we've seen in the Star Wars movies up until this point is that crossguard lightsaber, and that's because it's a creation which is entirely his own. Abrams describes it as being as "dangerous and as fierce and as ragged as the character." That all sounds great, but there's a twist...
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Josh Wilding hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.