Is This 'Star Wars: Episode VIII's Title?

Reddit can be a great source for getting information at the earliest possible date and the latest Star Wars rumor seems to prove this: a video posted on Reddit purports to show the Star Wars: Episode VIII title. Specifically, the video shows the sort of poster you'd see at conventions with the title Star Wars: Episode VIII — Fall of the Resistance on it.

To answer the question I guess everyone's most interested in, is this the official title for the film? Moviepilot (see link above) believes not and refers to the franchise's long history of using working titles way up until the date of release. Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace , for example, was known as Star Wars Episode I: The Beginning on set, while as Tevlin notes, The Force Awakens was known as Episode VII: Foodles on set — "Foodles," of course, after the Disney snacks for kids.

But even if this was the working title, we could still glean a whole lot of information about the plot if the video was legit. Io9, however, speculates that the Star Wars : Episode VIII title video is fake. Whitbrook, who penned the piece, emphasises how weird the design is if this is true: "The star field of the poster looks really weird, stamped with the same repeated pattern of two stars all over it. Compare it to the similar teaser poster for The Force Awakens, and you can see how iffy and unnatural this looks."

See for yourselves:

He also pointed out that it's claimed to be a poster for Celebration Europe, which is taking place in mid-July and which has a packed event schedule before then, asking:

So why would they be setting up two months in advance, especially displaying posters with a closely guarded secret like the title of the next Star Wars movie in a very public place?

Whitbrook, you pose some important questions. Let me add some more fuel to this skepticism-a-thon: namely, why would the film title contain what effectively amounts to being a pretty hefty plot spoiler? The obvious re-joiner to this would be, hey, well hang on a second, wasn't The Empire Strikes Back the most successful Star Wars film to date? Yeah, OK, sure. But does lightning really strike twice? Would the people behind the film really want to divulge such a key plot point when the film industry these days is all about the tease?

In summary, it's exciting if it's true, but given the deluge of previous Episode VIII title spoilers that have yet to be confirmed ( Echoes of the Dark Side , Tale of the Jedi Temple ), I'm staying cynical until we get some more official voices weighing in.

Images: Walt Disney Studios