Star Wars 7 Villain Rumor Update: Possible Actors And Design Choices Revealed

The biggest fun piece of Star Wars Episode VII speculation this week centered on the villains. Star Wars website MakingStarWars ran an elaborate rumor about the nature of the film's bad guys, only to have the statement refuted by another site, TheForce.net. The latter said the first rumor was 100% inaccurate... but J.J. Abrams also said Khan wasn't in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Which is why, at this point in the game, it's hard to take anything as true. Even quotes from the filmmakers themselves could by lies this far out, which is why Star Wars fans have to have their rumor deflector shields up at all times. Unless it's reported by StarWars.com, it's a rumor, no matter if you read it here, on a Star Wars fan site, or anywhere else.

That said, a new wrinkle to that villain rumor mill has now been unearthed. Latino Review claims the original rumor, while mostly false, does have a few very important pieces of truth in it. What are they? We'll reveal those potentials spoiler below.

Everything below will assume you've read the main pieces of the Making Star Wars article, so assume minor spoilers.

According to this piece on Latino Review, the name "Jedi Hunters" is not the term most people involved in the movie are using for the bad guys. That word is "mercenaries" but the general idea of a group of like-minded, bad guys is probably true. Anyone could have guessed that, though. More importantly they claim Adam Driver and Lupita Nyong'o are indeed the bad guys, as reported. They add that David Oyelowo hasn't been cast.

Latino Review claims the idea of "black and chrome" bad guys is also accurate. These will most likely be the "mercenaries," wielding lightsabers, played by Driver and Nyong'o. (There will also be some kind of Storm Trooper underlings.) Those will look like some of Ralph McQuarrie's unused concept art, a design practice the teams behind Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Episode VII have both 100% been doing. Some possible examples:

Ralph McQuarrie StormTrooper concepts

As for the rest of the report, Latino Review seems to agree with TheForce.net saying the specific stuff about the villain's intentions isn't correct. In fact, Latino Review offers up their own fun bit of plot speculation surrounding Luke. Head there to read it. But it seems Latino Review says there are some nuggets of truth to the initial rumor reported by Making Star Wars, which makes The Force.net's claim of 100% inaccuracy, itself, 100% inaccurate, mathematically speaking. (If you claim something is 100% false and even 1% of it is true, you are 100% false.)

A weird, probably unrelated side note, this "Shadow Storm Trooper" is being released at San Diego Comic-Con as an exclusive. It doesn't have an Episode attached. Thanks to the Hollywood Reporter:

shadow-storm-trooper-sdcc

Anyway, that toy being available is the most factual thing we can say about Star Wars in the past few weeks. But the timing of this black Storm Trooper, with all these rumors of Episode VII having black-colored bad guys, is certainly curious if not coincidental.

Who do you believe or, more importantly, who do you want to believe when it comes to these recent Star Wars rumors?