Thoughts on the new Star Wars trailer

OMG, guys! The feels, THE FEELS!

The new Star Wars trailer came out last week, and I have watched it at least half a dozen times every day since. It’s awesome. While I’m still ambivalent enough not to rush out and buy tickets right away, there are a number of things that I think look promising:

• The major characters from the original trilogy are all there, but they seem to be more in a supporting role than the main one. The story has clearly grown bigger than just them.
• The gritty used-future feel of the original trilogy is back, and it looks like it’s been done very well.
• The CG doesn’t seem to be overdone, like it was in the prequels. It looks like they actually built a set for the Millennium Falcon and several other places.
• There’s actually some blood shown—not all the kills are clean and “cauterized.”
• The attention to detail on stuff like the Star Destroyer wreckage is phenomenal.

Of course, this could still be a case where the trailer is awesome and the movie is awful. That seems to happen a lot these days. But still, I definitely want to see this movie—the only question is whether I’m going to see it in the first couple of months when it comes out, or when it hits the dollar theater.

I can still remember when Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out. There was a lot of hype, and a lot of building excitement, much like there is now for Episode VII: The Force Awakens. All of my enthusiasm crashed when I saw the movie in the theater. Jar-Jar Binks, Midichloriens, way too much CGI, and a pedo-tastic love story—yeah, it was a disappointment. Episodes II and III weren’t quite as bad, but none of the prequels were good enough to be redeemable in my eyes. None of them lived up to the original.

I don’t know yet if Episode VII: The Force Awakens will live up to the originals, but it does seem that this is the Star Wars movie that we’ve been waiting for—the one that we wanted and didn’t get back in 1999. So yeah, I’m excited.

Also, I love John Boyega’s reaction to seeing himself in the trailer:

I reacted the exact same way after I saw the original Star Wars back when I was seven: jumping over couches flying my imaginary X-Wing, bouncing off the walls and freaking out from excitement. So it’s good to see that one of the new actors is also a huge fan.

As a side note, I just want to say that I love the fact that we live in a world where the next Luke Skywalker can be a black kid (or a girl for that matter—it’s hard to tell from the trailers whether Finn or Rey fills Luke’s role). I don’t say that to pander to political correctness or social justice in any way—I just think it’s awesome that the lead character is black, and the other one is a girl.

But speaking of Luke Skywalker, it’s telling that we don’t really see him at all in any of the trailers. So I’m going to call it now:

Luke dies.

That’s a hunch, not a spoiler. I have nothing to base it off of except the three Star Wars trailers and my own understanding of how story structure works. But based on that, I suspect that Luke plays the Obi-Wan mentor to Finn or Rey and dies just like Obi-Wan did.

So that’s my take on it. Definitely looking forward to Christmas this year!