by: Jay Carlson – Editor-in-chief

And the Star Wars news keeps on rolling.

Entertainment Weekly picks up where it left off yesterday with its amazing features on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Their newest piece focuses on the mysterious Maz Kanata, played by Lupita Nyong’o. Nyong’o’s performance, like her co-star Andy Serkis is completely motion captured.

Abrams explains the choice to have Nyong’o suit up for Maz rather than using practical effects, “I wanted to do the creature as a puppet originally, but once we figured out the things that she was required to do, it felt like [performance capture] was the way to go.”

He also confirms that it was indeed Maz that we spied on the recently released theatrical poster, sporting the dark goggles. “Her eyes have special meaning and power. “I had some specific ideas about how she would work and what she would do,” Abrams says. “I had this pitch about these goggles that she wore. Her eyes are an important aspect of her character, and you’ll see how it plays out.””

Nyong’o discusses what it means to play the character Abrams is describing, “As an actor for films, your eyes are a lot of the way you communicate anyway,” says Nyong’o. “So it was definitely a gift to have that be the means to her magic as a motion-capture character.”

What is Maz’s story? Abrams offers some explanation, “Her history is that she was a pirate for a long
time,” he says. “She’s lived over a thousand years. She’s had this watering hole for about a century, and it’s like another bar that you’d find in a corner of the Star Wars universe.” The film won’t fill in Maz’s history though, instead leaving that to the other mediums in the new star wars expanded universe, “In the movie, you don’t learn these things, but I know that these are things that are coming out in other venues.”