What Do These New 'Star Wars VIII' Photos Tell Us?

We're in a pretty low-key Star Wars lull, post-Force Awakens and pre-Force Awakens comes out on Blu-Ray. Unless you're like me and could throw down money to visit Chewbacca in Disney World, you're probably glue to your computer screen looking for any small morsel of Star Wars VIII news. Well, we have something juicy for you: new photos of the Star Wars VIII set have been leaked, and they take "Space Opera" to the next level.

That's right, the upcoming flick is being shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia right now, and though none of the main players have been identified (your Daisy Ridleys, your John Boyegas, et al) there's certainly some intergalactic shenanigans at hand. In fact, it looks like an explosively bad time for two unknown characters. The pair apparently find themselves in a very sleek looking landspeeder (like seriously, Chevy or someone is going to cut a deal with the Star Wars marketing team and start pushing those babies out) and promptly jump out just before it explodes. It seems that this is more of an assassination attempt versus a crash... but who are these people that are important enough to assassinate? Clearly we're getting some new faces to the roster.

But the weirdest part of this entire set-up? The two characters are all suited up in what looks like some minimalist Harry Potter dress robes. In subsequent images released more characters are wearing these black and white ensembles, formalwear with at least two grotesque-looking aliens among their ranks. And yes, I know that technically all these characters are aliens by virtue of not being Earthlings, but we're talking green and orange skinned reptilian looking creatures with weird facial hair and bold jewelry choices. What exactly is going on here?

Initially I figured that these characters might be leaving some kind of strange senate meeting because the prequels just love to drive home all those fun adventures in politics. So far, though, J.J. Abrams vision has been such a far departure from the sequels that I'm assuming he wouldn't dare put us through that again.

So now my thoughts come to something kind of strange, and certainly meta: are these characters leaving some kind of space opera? Because that would explain all of these pseudo-black tie outfits, and it would be a hilarious poke at Star Wars, clearly the most successful franchise within the space opera genre. I mean, unless this is a bunch of characters going to space prom, which would be... somehow infinitely more confusing.

It wouldn't be far fetched to assume that there's some kind of baaad underhand deals going on at whatever even these characters are attending, and maybe other scenes will show members of the Resistance infiltrating said theoretical space opera in all their formalwear. Who knows. All that's certain is that there's a lot to be excited for with the new Star Wars film, and you can gobble up all the leaked photos here so you can keep satiated until that Force Awakens Blu-Ray release.

Images: Disney (1)