When the first trailer forStar Wars: The Last Jediarrived, many fans were intrigued by the scene where a number of ships speed across a new planet later revealed asCrait, with the ships' stabilizers scraping against the ground, causing a trail of red mist to follow behind each ship. While we have since learned a bit more about Crait, a remote mineral planet, we haven’t learned more about those ships, known as “ski speeders,” until today. In a new interview, Lucasfilm story group executive Pablo Hidalgo revealed that these Resistance ships aren’t exactly top-of-the-line vehicles. Here’s what he had to say below.
“One of Rian’s overriding principals on them is … they are basically heaps of crap. They are old and not meant to instill confidence. They are like a lot of things in theResistance, weapons of last resort. Use what you have on hand, even old, outdated stuff falling apart for years. If you believe in it, hopefully it will fly.”
TheseStar Wars shipsare in such rough shape that they wouldn’t even be able to fly at all without those stabliziers. The cockpit hangs off to one side, with a “bulky engine” and fin in the middle and another wing hanging off the opposite side. We also saw in the trailer that they can’t even fly off short cliffs, plunging to the ground below, so it remains unclear how effective these ski speeders will be in combat. Especially considering the massive size of the First Order army and their fleet of much more impressive ships, but we learned inStar Wars: The Force Awakensnever to count out the Resistance in a fight.
We reported last week that box office analysts are predicting a$200 million opening weekendforStar Wars: The Last Jedi, which is more than enough to surpass Disney’s ownBeauty and the Beast’s $174.7 million debut for the biggest opening weekend of the year. Still, it will fall quite short of the $247.9 million opening weekend record set two years ago byStar Wars: The Force Awakens, which means it will likely not surpass the $936.6 all time domestic record also held byStar Wars: The Force Awakens. It will, however, most likely follow inStar Wars: The Force AwakensandRogue One: A Star Wars Story’s footsteps by becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year
TheStar Wars: The Last Jedi runtimewas also recently confirmed, and at two hours and 33 minutes, it will be the longestStar Warsmovie of all time. Mark Hamill recently commented on the lengthy runtime, comparing the movie toThe Godfather, but we’ll have to wait and see how fans react to this lengthy movie. This news on the ski speeders comes fromEntertainment Weekly, although it remains unclear how much more we’ll learn about these ships in the next two weeks beforeStar Wars: The Last Jedihits theaters.
