“It feels like a coming home,” said director Jon Favreau after walking out onstage on the opening day of Star Wars Celebration Japan 2025. It was the morning of Friday, April 18, and Favreau was there to promote The Mandalorian & Grogu, the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s The Rise of the Skywalker. Yet his comments about this homecoming-like occasion (a nod to the franchise’s Japanese inspirations) also summed up my personal feelings as I had my own full-circle moment with Star Wars in Japan after ten years.
‘Star Wars: Starfighter’ Announcement
Makuhari Messe, the convention center that served as the venue for Star Wars Celebration Japan 2025, is technically located outside the Tokyo city limits in the neighboring prefecture of Chiba. That’s something it has in common with Tokyo Disney Resort, which the Keiyo Line train passes on the way out to Makuhari Messe from Tokyo Station. After arriving in Kaihimmakuhari Station and picking up my convention badge in Hall 9, I got in line for the first big panel of Celebration Japan 2025.
Signs labeled “This is the way,” per a quote from Favreau’s Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, guided attendees to the main Celebration Stage. Reservations for The Mandalorian & Grogu panel were available only by lottery or with a three-day “Jedi Master” ticket that ran ¥140,133 (about $985). The otherwise free lottery was open to peasants like me, who were only there on a one-day ticket that cost ¥8,298 (or $58).
On a side note, things have gotten so bad for freelancers that I couldn’t even sell a science fiction editor on some on-the-ground coverage of Star Wars Celebration this year. They seemed content to just do things secondhand and have their own in-house writers in the U.S. aggregate all the breaking news out of Celebration from sources online. As a result, I was just there as a fan, but I did get lucky and win the lottery. Let’s just pretend I used the Force to do it.
Makuhari Messe is where the Summer Sonic music festival is held every year, and the atmosphere around the Celebration Stage was, similarly, like that of a rock concert—with fans holding up glowing lightsabers instead of just phone lights. I thought the panel would only be covering The Mandalorian & Grogu, but it actually began with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and chief creative officer Dave Filoni welcoming Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy to the stage.
Levy announced that he was already in pre-production on another new Star Wars movie, set to be released on May 28, 2027. “It’s a standalone adventure that takes place a few years after the events of Episode IX,” he teased. He then confirmed that rumors of Ryan Gosling’s casting were true, before Gosling himself, the three-time Oscar nominee, made a surprise appearance onstage, bringing the crowd to its feet with gasps and cheers. The title of Levy and Gosling’s movie, they revealed, is Star Wars: Starfighter.
In addition to being a former Mouseketeer, Gosling is apparently a lifelong Star Wars fan. As proof, Kennedy shared a picture that the actor’s mother sent Lucasfilm of some Empire Strikes Back bedsheets he had when he was a youngling of 5. “I guess I was probably dreaming about Star Wars before I even saw the film,” Gosling said. “And it’s probably framed my idea of what a movie even was. But all of that aside, I think the reality is that this [Starfighter] script is just so good. It has such a great story with great and original characters.”
‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ Footage
On the Celebration Stage, Levy and Gosling were followed by Favreau. Though he didn’t specifically mention The Hidden Fortress, he did namecheck its director, Akira Kurosawa, while acknowledging Japanese cinema’s influence on Star Wars (including The Mandalorian series).
“When I think about Star Wars, and what inspired Star Wars,” Favreau told the crowd, “it’s so inextricably tied to Japanese cinema, Japanese culture, and tradition. George Lucas was very inspired by the filmmakers of Japan. And to come back here, to see the beautiful artwork, if you’ve looked around on the shirts and on the posters, it feels like a coming home.”
After that, The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal, took the stage in knee-high leather boots. Pascal recalled knowing early on that the show was going to be a success based on concept art that Favreau and Filoni shared with him.
“I’ll never forget the first day that I got to sit down with Jon and Dave in the writers’ room,” Pascal said. “And they showed me, you know, wall-to-wall story illustrations of the first season of Mandalorian without me even understanding who they expected me to play. And I remember just seeing the greatest sort of visual storyboards that I had ever seen, and knowing that people were going to lose their minds.”
Another surprise guest in the panel was Sigourney Weaver, who showed off set photos of herself in an X-Wing fighter costume. This was a bit surreal, given that Weaver is already deeply identified with another major sci-fi franchise, Alien. She said the casting process for her as she jumped ship (or spaceship) to Star Wars involved Zooming with Favreau first.
“He and Dave just started telling me about Mandalorian & Grogu, the movie, and gave me an assignment to watch [The Mandalorian series] because I’m afraid I had not watched it,” Weaver confessed. “Of course, like all of you, Grogu stole my heart,” she added. This cued up the arrival of a “real” moving and blinking Grogu, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, onstage.
The only way to top that, Favreau said, was by showing the crowd some footage. From the Celebration Stage, he debuted a sizzle reel with Mando shooting his way through the inside of an AT-AT walker. As Mando worked his way up to the cockpit, the framing of the scene reminded me of the hallway fight in Marvel’s Daredevil series.
You could see the AT-AT walker exploding and going down over the side of a snowy cliff, with Mando flying away on his jet pack while carrying Grogu. The footage also showed glimpses of the alien pilot Zeb and Jeremy Allen White’s Rotta the Hutt, the latter of whom could only be seen from the back, lifting his musclebound arms in a gladiator arena as Grogu munched popcorn in the stands.
The Mandalorian & Grogu hits theaters on May 22, 2026.
Are Photo Ops Worth It?
This was my first Star Wars Celebration, and another thing I didn’t realize was that all the big names who appeared in The Mandalorian & Grogu panel would later be sitting down for interviews on the Celebration Live stage. If you ever miss out on a panel, you might be able to see the stars of upcoming movies and streaming shows on the show floor, where fans are free to gather around the Live stage. While the movie footage we saw was exclusive to the Celebration Stage, you could hear the media-trained Gosling, for instance, repeat some of the same talking points about Starfighter in his live-streamed interview.
Another option for meeting Star Wars actors is paid photo ops and autograph signings. My old co-worker always does these with her daughter at Comic Con in Tokyo and Osaka. Through the Line app, she’s sent my wife pictures of her daughter with non-Star Wars actors like Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), along with Mads Mikkelsen, who was on hand at Celebration this year for all you Rogue One fans out there.
These experiences are pricey, however, with an “Anakin and Ahsoka” photo op, featuring Hayden Christensen and Rosario Dawson, costing ¥60,750 (or $427) in 2025. Even just a photo with one star like Mikkelsen or Andor’s Diego Luna was ¥24,995 (or $175) this year.
Having free, front-row media access to a stage talk with Dawson’s He Got Game costar, Denzel Washington, last November, I wasn’t about to pay to meet anyone at Celebration. On the show floor, though, I did run into Lucasfilm’s senior vice president and executive design director, Doug Chiang, getting a quick selfie with him.
A long time ago in a Hollywood far, far away, Chiang made his name as a visual effects art director for ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) on films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Forrest Gump. Then, he got involved in the Star Wars prequels and rose to the top of Lucasfilm. The guy’s an Academy Award winner, and it was my first time to pose for a picture with someone who holds that distinction. I had to throw an un-blur effect on our faces because I wasn’t even holding my iPhone camera steady. But getting a free snapshot with Chiang sure beat paying ¥15,495 (or $109) for one in his sold-out photo op at Celebration.
That Chiang was nice enough to donate a few seconds of his time restored my faith in humanity a little, which isn’t always something that the business side of Celebration does. As I explored this event, part of me felt like I was venturing into The Last Jedi’s casino planet, Canto Bight, which Wookiepedia describes as “a destination for wealthy individuals.” I say that as a Floridian who watched Disney monetize an entire Star Wars luxury hotel — the ill-fated Galactic Starcruiser — into oblivion in less than two years.
The Mouse House can be mercenary, and it’s not above fleecing fans at Celebration. Still, it feels like they’re sending the wrong message by having people buy their way in with “Jedi Master” status for $1,000, as if the Force were for sale. Cut to Luke Skywalker exclaiming, “A thousand? We could almost buy our own ship for that!”
I couldn’t even get into the Show Store to buy an omiyage (souvenir) for my wife because they were only letting in people who had bought Lightspeed Lane reservations. Much like Lightning Lane at Disney World, these reservations were sold as something that would allow you to skip to the front of long lines. But instead of riding a Star Wars attraction, you’d essentially just be paying to spend more money on souvenirs. If the ka-ching of cash registers could sound out “The Imperial March,” it might make for fitting background music at Celebration.
As I wandered the show floor, I ultimately got much more enjoyment out of just photographing fans in cool, movie-accurate costumes. The 501st Legion and other costume clubs were there, and they had one whole area in Hall 5 set up like an Outer Rim trading post. You could see scout troopers hanging out like in that one Taika Waititi-directed episode of The Mandalorian, and there were even two Gamorrean Guards standing sentry outside.
Stay tuned, because at the end of this post, I’ll share more photos of the coolest costumes I saw at Celebration Japan 2025.
Return of the Nebuta
“Ahsokanoke” by Dave Filoni and “My Copilot Chewbacca” by Chris Madden. Images via StarWars.com.
On the back side of the Anime & Manga Pavilion, they had a gallery mashing up Star Wars with Ghibli-style art (by real human artists, not AI). Inside the pavilion, they had a live cherry tree with silk blossoms on display, along with the red lightsaber umbrella from “The Duel,” the Kurosawa-esque episode of the animated anthology, Star Wars: Visions. I wrote a whole explainer about that lightsaber umbrella back in 2021, and this was just one way that attending Celebration was like taking a trip down Star Wars memory lane. With all the callbacks to previous Star Wars events here in Japan, it left me feeling that the circle was now complete from 2015 to 2025.
On the show floor, you could see the Japanese folding screens showcased at Shiodome’s Star Wars exhibitions in 2015 and 2017. ANA’s booth had models of its droid-style Star Wars planes, including the R2-D2 jet, which I saw at Narita International Airport in 2019. Seeing a life-size X-wing fighter and TIE fighter elsewhere on the show floor reminded me of the ones that were parked at Singapore Changi Airport in 2015.
I also saw a fan in a costume like Bandai’s Ronin Boba Fett figure, which was displayed behind glass at Toys “R” Us Odaiba in 2017. Peeking at the Black Series figures in Hasbro’s booth, including a Celebration-exclusive set with The Ronin & R5-D56 from “The Duel,” I didn’t much regret selling my own collection to the Star Case store in Koenji. With a baby at home, I can’t afford to be dropping ¥15,000 ($105) on an action figure.
The pièce de resistance at Celebration Japan 2025 was a brand-new Star Wars Nebuta float, harkening back to the glow-in-the-dark floats that toured Aomori and Tokyo in the year of The Force Awakens. I could see the flame decoration on the float’s rear burning bright across the show floor, but it wasn’t until I got up close that I realized my very favorite “Star Wars in Japan” memory was coming back to life in a new, eye-catching way.
This new float was themed to The Mandalorian & Grogu, and it was even created by the same artists who made the original Jedi float in 2015. To paraphrase Yoda, “Always two [Nebuta artists] there are. A master and an apprentice.” Ryusei Uchiyama was the master, and Ryuho Tatsuta was the apprentice for this float.
At the end of the day, as I headed back to the train station, I happened across a fan who was cosplaying as the character Teebo, an Ewok. This, too, brought back a Star Wars memory: namely, my After Hours Star Wars Day experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in 2019. The only thing we didn’t get to do that night, because the line was too long, was meet an Ewok under the village outside the Star Tours ride. Now, thanks to this year’s Celebration, I can cross “Meet an Ewok” off my bucket list, too.
Below, you can see a few more select pics of fans in costume at Star Wars Celebration Japan 2025. These are taken from my full gallery of 75 photos. Some cosplayers got very creative, dressing up as everything from Samurai Darth Vader to Chewbacca with a KFC bucket. My trip to the droid depot, meanwhile, brought to mind the R5-D4 investigation I once conducted.
There are two mini galleries below; one is vertically oriented, the other is horizontally oriented. Check them out, and have fun getting to L.A. in 2027 for the next Celebration amid the 50th anniversary of Star Wars.
