Force Material Episode XII: The Bridge on the River Kwai

Madness! Madness! We're revisiting one of the all-time great war films for clues about The Last Jedi and making our final predictions in this week's episode of the Force Material podcast!

This episode will be our last before The Last Jedi premieres and renders all of our idle speculation moot, so first up this week, we're putting it all on the table and making our final Episode VIII predictions. 

Who are Rey's parents? Is she just a random, or is the Force strong with her family?

Is Snoke just a bloke, or is he actually a classic character back from the dead? 

How will it all end? What will the state of the galaxy look like heading into Episode IX? 

Bookmark this episode so you can see just how wrong all our guesses turn out to be when the film opens next week! 

Then, in our feature presentation, we're going back to director Rian Johnson's film camp to watch another of the films he made his cast and crew watch before they began shooting The Last Jedi. 

Directed by David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) tells the story of a British officer and POW, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (played by Old Ben Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness), who forms an unlikely working relationship with his Japanese captor, Colonel Saito (played by the utterly fascinating Sessue Hayakwawa).

We're breaking down how Kwai relates to the other films in Johnson's program, and which recurring themes and scenarios pop up again here.

And, mostly, we're just marveling at how bloody brilliant this 60-year-old film continues to be - especially that electrifying finale. 

Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.