If you’re paying any attention to Space Bear, the code name under which Star Wars: Episode 8 is shooting, then you’ve probably seen more photos of a single street in Dubrovnik than of your own childhood. The Croatian city, frequently used as a shooting location for Game of Thrones, will be the site of a rumored speeder chase in Star Wars: Episode 8. With the location shoot rumored for March 9 (according to a Dubrovnik resident translating local newspapers for Making Star Wars), set dressers have been busy converting a street of stores and several local landmarks into more alien configurations: adding round doors, neon lighting, and Star Wars control panels everywhere.
Now new footage from the Dubrovnik Star Wars set gives us our most sustained look yet:
After days of photos and tourists poking and prodding, the sheer glut of material clogging the Episode 8 rumor mill is beginning to look a little suspicious.
Sets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens had nothing like this level of public exposure. That’s partially to do with the on-location nature of the Episode 8 shoot, but might something else be at play here as well?
J.J. Abrams is infamous for his “mystery box” approach to movie spoilers. His shoots are designed to be as tightly locked off as possible. This can go so far as straight up lying about Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness for months and months.
Star Wars: Episode 8 director Rian Johnson is trying a different tactic. “I think Rian actually wants to be a bit cheekier with the little tidbits of information that are going out, which is fun,” Daisy Ridley, who returns as Rey in Episode 8, said to Entertainment Tonight.
While Johnson may be more inclined to let slip Episode 8 news, he’s still unlikely to blow open the kind of spoilers upon which sites like Making Star Wars or r/StarWarsLeaks feed. Is it possible Johnson hopes to keep the beast distracted and sated instead? We have been fed loads of photos from this one set in Dubrovnik, without ever touching on any real plot elements from the new Star Wars (despite early rumors that Ridley would be filming on the set).
Remember when Iron Man 3 came out and everyone was talking about whether or not The Mandarin would be in it? Marvel kept it coy, teasing The Mandarin and refusing to go to the lengths Abrams did with Khan and Star Trek . The result? Everyone was caught with their eye-pants down when some schmo named Aldrich Killian turned out to be the movie’s main villain.
Abrams’ tendency to play up the secrecy of his productions generates exactly the kind of intrusive obsession with spoilers that leads to leaked photos of Luke Skywalker and manic analysis of script code names.
Whereas here’s Rian Johnson, filming Star Wars: Episode 8 all over the world and all anyone can do is take more and more photos of a suspiciously open set in Dubrovnik. At this point, so many headlines, photos and videos have been produced from this one location that it might as well be an early demo for Disney’s Star Wars theme park.
It would strain credulity to say that Dubrovnik is nothing more than a smokescreen to distract the spoiler hungry mobs. But it does seem possible that we’ve all been poring over a set that will appear as little more than an establishing shot in Star Wars: Episode 8, while right around the corner Rian Johnson is shooting the new Jar Jar Binks cyborgs unharassed.
