Empire January 2022

BOBA FETT IS one of the very few movie characters to have inspired a pasta dish. Namely, ‘Boba Fettuccine’, a hearty heap of carbohydrates that was created by a fan and features red peppers, cream and a small mountain of shredded Romano cheese. Word is, unlike anything that falls into a Sarlacc pit, it takes less than a millennium to digest. Though probably not much less. Such is the lasting power of a minor Star Wars character who became a phenomenon. In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, bounty hunter Fett stood near a large metal ant in a Usual Suspects-style line-up of intergalactic perps-for-hire. Four decades on, while the large metal ant is yet to get a Disney+ show (we predict it’ll land in 2028), Boba is about to blast…

BOBA FETT IS one of the very few movie characters to have inspired a pasta dish. Namely, ‘Boba Fettuccine’, a hearty heap of carbohydrates that was created by a fan and features red peppers, cream and a small mountain of shredded Romano cheese. Word is, unlike anything that falls into a Sarlacc pit, it takes less than a millennium to digest. Though probably not much less. Such is the lasting power of a minor Star Wars character who became a phenomenon. In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, bounty hunter Fett stood near a large metal ant in a Usual Suspects-style line-up of intergalactic perps-for-hire. Four decades on, while the large metal ant is yet to get a Disney+ show (we predict it’ll land in 2028), Boba is about to blast his…

COMMENT OF THE MONTH A GRAND DIE OUT One scene in No Time To Die has been rattling around my brain since I saw it: the inclusion of a few seconds of The Wrong Trousers. Nothing is an accident in a film like NTTD, so what does it mean? I think it’s there as a subtle foreshadowing of a critical part of the plot. On young Madeleine’s TV we see Feathers McGraw captured in a milk bottle — clearly a nod to Blofeld held captive in his little jail trolley. Gromit therefore equals James Bond himself, with Wallace as his M. TOM NICHOLSON, WIGAN Now this is how you solve the New Bond conundrum. ‘Moonraker 2: Wensleydale Is Forever’, anyone? Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for…

COMMENT OF THE MONTH A GRAND DIE OUT One scene in No Time To Die has been rattling around my brain since I saw it: the inclusion of a few seconds of The Wrong Trousers. Nothing is an accident in a film like NTTD, so what does it mean? I think it’s there as a subtle foreshadowing of a critical part of the plot. On young Madeleine’s TV we see Feathers McGraw captured in a milk bottle — clearly a nod to Blofeld held captive in his little jail trolley. Gromit therefore equals James Bond himself, with Wallace as his M. TOM NICHOLSON, WIGAN Now this is how you solve the New Bond conundrum. ‘Moonraker 2: Wensleydale Is Forever’, anyone? Picture house Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus…

FOR FORTY YEARS, cinematic events didn’t get more, well, cinematic than Star Wars. But if bringing Hollywood’s greatest galaxy to the small screen in 2019 with The Mandalorian was something of a gamble, it paid off. For now, the immediate future of Star Wars belongs to Disney+. While the next movie, Rogue Squadron, is still several years away, 2022 brings a flurry of streaming series set across different corners and eras of the galaxy far, far away. “It’s pretty exciting to see what’s going to be coming next year with Obi-Wan and Andor, Mandalorian, Ahsoka,” says Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. “These projects are all so individual and unique in their own way that I think they’ll appeal to a wide variety of audiences within Star Wars.” For Kennedy, it’s no surprise that…

MICHAEL BAY HAS spent his entire career putting people into ambulances. (Movie characters, we should stress.) So it was perhaps inevitable that he would eventually end up inside one himself. “I’m telling you, you get slammed around in there,” he laughs of the title star of his new movie. “I got fucked up several times with the camera. Literally. I went face-plant into the dash, I hit the walls… it’s pretty hard in there when you hit a corner.” The reason Bay was crammed into the back of an ambulance haring around LA streets at speeds even regular ones would baulk at is simple. It’s all in service of Ambulance, a thriller which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Danny and Will Sharp, two adoptive brothers who, immediately after…