Is BB-8 kvinnlig?

In-universet UPPDATERAD. TL; DR: Den mest kanoniska är att han är manlig.

• Det finns inget kön som tydligt anges i filmen till min påminnelse (den här delen är föremål för granskning när jag tittar på igen, eller som officiellt skript är tillgängligt) .

• BB-8 kallas "han" i Alan Dean Foster-romaniseringen, så svaret är "inte kvinnligt" .

  Bortsett från det ibland är det också en oöverträffad "it".

  Where a human would see only empty night sky, advanced calibrated synthetic optics saw a moving point of light. When the light resolved itself into four separate points, the droid commenced an agitated beeping. The phenomenon he was seeing might signify nothing, except…

  Beeping and whistling in something approaching cybernetic panic, the droid spun and sped back toward the village. That is, its head spun... While it could have transmitted the conclusion it had reached, it did not do so for fear of any such message being intercepted

  So BB-8 was forced to dodge and avoid, which he did with skill and patience,...

  Deep within the village, there was far less likelihood of encountering anything domesticated that was worth eating: a biological process he understood from an objective point of view but for which he could never rouse much empathy. His goal was close, and there was not a nanosecond to lose.

  ...Far away now, a solitary spherical droid looked back even as it continued to flee. The fireball that rose into the sky suggested the detonation of something far more volatile than primitive buildings and scrapped mechanicals. If he could have rolled faster, the frightened droid would have done so.
  ... There were things in the vacant, wild regions of underdeveloped planets that would gladly take apart a solitary droid just to see what made it tick. Or roll, he knew. His internal gyros threatened to send him tumbling wildly at the very thought of such an encounter.
  Droids such as him were not meant for unpopulated places, and he desperately desired to find others like himself. Or, failing that, even people.

• Ingen könsbestämd information i Pablo Hidalgos visuella ordbokssida för BB-8.

Utanför universum:

När Facebook-statusen går, "är det komplicerat".

• Å ena sidan, JJ Abrams var ansedd att säga :

  JJ [Abrams] was determined to make BB-8 cute and strong – and female. They want to appeal to girls as much boys, who have traditionally been the fan base. She’s going to be one of the breakout hits of the film.”

  Samma källa säger:

  Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy later referred to BB-8 as “she”, and reports from the films set, as well as some of the Star Wars publicity materials, suggested that the new droid was a girl (confusingly, puppeteers Dave Chapman and Brian Herring, who are responsible for operating the robot, have previously referred to BB-8 as “him”).

• Men samma JJAbram kallade BB-8 en "han" på Underhållning Weekly .

  Abrams chose the droid’s name because it looked round and bouncy. “I named him BB-8 because it was almost onomatopoeia,” the director says. “It was sort of how he looked to me, with the 8, obviously, and then the 2 B’s.”

• Alla tecknade "talanger" bakom BB-8 var manlig:

  Dave Chapman and Brian Herring served as puppeteers for BB-8,[36] with Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz credited as "Vocal Consultants"[37]. (Wiki, citing SW.com news and HitFlix)

  Men från vad jag kunde berätta från Ben Schwartz intervjuer kom de flesta av talangerna ut ur iPad-appen, som igen stöder "ingen kön" -status eftersom iPads inte könsbestäms.

(@ rands svar har mer fullständiga detaljer om "komplicerad" status:)

Intressant nog har denna fråga nyligen ställts till casten och besättningen. Resultatet var blandat, med de flesta säger att de aldrig tänkt på det eller sagt som en droid BB-8 var genderless. JJ Abrahams uppgav

I always refer to him as a 'he'. But I don't know, I haven't looked under the hood.

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