Good news for people worried there isn’t enough advertising for the new Star Wars film — ESPN and Mark Hamill are joining forces (get it?) for a 30-minute show that aims to connect sports with the movie franchise’s iconic light saber battles.
ESPN is owned by Disney, which is also the studio producing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That information is for anyone wondering why this promotional program is airing on the Worldwide Leader and not Fox Sports, NBC Sports or any other sports network in the 50 states.
How will actors pretending to sword fight in space relate in any way to sports? From the release, there actually appears to be merit to this documentary, which airs Dec. 15, three days before the movie is released.
For the documentary, ESPN traveled to the 2015 Kendo World Championships in Japan to gather interviews and information to explain the genesis of kendo and how it applies to Star Wars lightsaber duels.
Hamill, who reprises his role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, lived in Japan for his last two years of high school and is very familiar with kendo.
“I really feel that kendo has informed so much of what we have done in the films it is about time that it gets some long-overdue recognition,” Hamill said.
Sure, this would be like Shia LaBeouf hosting a documentary that delves into the fighting technique that the Transformers used in those movies, but hey, it’s not two adult men shouting at each other about sports, so at least it’s a change of pace for ESPN.
And maybe, just maybe, Hamill and ESPN will reveal a small semblance of the movie’s plot, which is all any of us really want before the movie is released, right?
