Star Wars' Adam Driver has delighted fans of the franchise by comparing the eagerly-awaited Episode VIII to 1980 classic The Empire Strikes Back.
In an interview with film website Collider, Driver, who plays villain Kylo Ren, was asked for his thoughts on the script for the Rian Johnson-directed blockbuster, the follow up to 2015's The Force Awakens.
"It's great," he replied. "It's similar to how The Empire Strikes Back has a different tone. For that people always go, 'Oooh, it's dark', but I don't know that it necessarily is. It's just different in tone in a way that, I think, is great and necessary but also very clear."
Driver described Johnson as a director who trusts that "his audience is ready for nuance and ambiguity".
"He's not dumbing anything down for someone and that's really fun to play," he added.
Star Wars: Episode VIII, which reunites Driver's Kylo Ren with Domhnall Gleeson's character General Hux, filmed in Ireland earlier this year and is scheduled for release on December 15, 2017.
The upcoming Star Wars spin-off movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which takes place before events in the original 1977 classic, is released on December 16, 2016.
