Hey folks, Harry here... I took the above photo as I was heading into the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar at 8:13am this morning. I was invited late last night to join a panel to watch the trailer 17 times in an hour and discuss it in geeklicious detail. It was... fucking awesome.
I was talking with Merrick & Robogeek with Alamo Drafthouse Founder Tim League shot me a conspiratorial come hither look... I wheeled away from my friends and headed directly to Theater 5, the BUTT-NUMB-A-THON screen... I was greeted with this upon the screen:
The "KEY" for screening the trailer was set to 8:30am (Central Standard Time) and the wait was excruciating. In the theater were 5 of us... Father Geek was beside me, as he has been for all things STAR WARS since we saw the initial teaser for the original film at Comic Con a lifetime ago. You've all seen the trailer now... but at 8:30am, all I knew was what a very trusted old school original AICN spy told me, that we'd get no Original Trilogy actors and the circular dish that the Falcon lost in JEDI was going to be replaced with a rectanglar one, fitting with modern terrestial tech here in our Galaxy. Oh and that images would fade to black.
When the atonal music began on a dark screen revealing a desert... goosebumps, but the second John Boyega pops up in his StormTrooper armor... frantically looking around sweating like Peter O'Toole in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA... with that big whomp sound from Jedi... I... I was sold. Frankly, I didn't even need another shot.
Everything I need to know about THE FORCE AWAKENS was set. We hear, what some say is Andy Serkis and others say is Benedict Cumberbatch doing creepy fucking voice over... and then BOYEGA.... BELIEVE! Just for the record, I've now seen the trailer 12 times theatrically, and I begged Tim League to freeze frame on the big screen shots... which was spectacular... but for about 10 of those screenings, I was about 10 feet from that huge Theater 5 screen to the far right side of the screen... and it felt like when I was a little kid at the AMERICANA theater watching EMPIRE STRIKES BACK laying on the floor looking up at the screen with wonder. It didn't matter I was too close, the point was... it felt like I was there.
Oh yeah, BOYEGA.... So Boyega... what the fuck. Ok, so did he steal the armor, is he a Storm Trooper that WAKES UP WITH THE FORCE, what's going on there... NOW... total theory stuff here... but what if Boyega is piloting one of those TIE FIGHTERS versus the FALCON which might be being piloted by Daisy Ridley... and the TIE goes down, with him being ejected? OR or or... maybe he was doing some peyote on Tatooine and woke up with the sweats!?!?!? I really hope that Boyega is playing a Trooper that questions his path and begins a hero's journey. I mean, that was what Biggs and Luke's plans were... Join the Academy, become a Trooper and find a way to join the Rebellion. Here, if Ridley is playing Leia & Han's daughter... and we KNOW that she and Boyega were doing it up on the Desert sets for the film... I just can't wait.
Ok, but there's other shots!!! So cool... We get the rolypoly droid, which would be a cool little remote control toy to have speeding around the house. There's Daisy Ridley's PodSpeeder (what I call it)... and I love that Ben Burtt engine sound...
Then there's the other environment - that snowy forresty watery place... We don't know the planet's name... but we do know that early McQuarrie X-Wings without Engines on the X-wings, but attached to the main body in back.... and we se we Oscar Isaac piloting one, and they're speeding very low towards something intensely... and it seems that Oscar might be triggering his targeting display - and maybe it's about to pop out in front of his face unless Alec Guinness tells him to put that shit up... We also know that StormTroopers are being let out on this planet and we know that Adam Driver's dark sithy character with his "Sithcalibur" (as Nordling deems it) shows up there.
And that dizzyingly awesome Falcon shot to reverse direction and take on the Tie Fighters head on... LOVE IT! Love it. Watching that shot 12 foot from the screen and skewed made me giggle and feel... WHOA, every single f'n time!
I love that this teaser is about setting up the tone and sense of urgency, more than setting up the Nostalgia of what we know... mainly, the Original Trilogy characters. When the casting was being announced, I heard a lot of bitching about who wanted to see a bunch of old farts in a non-Lucas STAR WARS film? My answer to that was... "ALL OF US!" However, this teaser comes out and says STAR WARS takes place in a real galaxy far far away and it feels IMMEDIATE and BADASS. As always, alot of that is John Williams, but JJ is doing some amazing stuff in these glimpses we're seeing.
As QUINT pointed out, we're getting shots in the midsts of things. Characters with determined faces reacting to things we can't see... but we're dying to see. For all the leaks and alleged things we've heard... there's a metric ton that nobody knows. I feel STAR WARS as much as I take it apart intellectually. My heart rate has been speeding solid for the past 4+ hours since first seeing it and I haven't begun taking it apart frame by frame online yet. On the drive back from the Drafthouse, I was streaming it on my iPhone 6+ and continuing to geek out, but getting home... I just had to write. Had to get into it.
I showed Dad a freeze frame of the TIE FIGHTERS firing upon the Falcon - and he said, "WE SAW THAT SHOT?" cuz... man, it's just a perfect image.
Now, I've already had a couple of folks get all, "Underwhelmed," by this - and if that's the case, I'm deeply sorry for you. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds me to a multigenerational multisexual killer cool group of fans that it has been one of the greatest joys of my life to discover.
A friend of mine the other day, a director, asked me how I could be excited about a Non-Lucas continuance of STAR WARS... and I did stumble a bit to explain it. I think, I've never really afixed STAR WARS exclusively to George Lucas. Yes, it began with him. But then Alan Dean Foster wrote SPLINTER IN THE MIND'S EYE and Al Williamson started drawing the STAR WARS universe, and Joe Johnston designed that Animated sequence in the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL - and then George decided to not write & direct EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI and sure... he was a "guiding presence" and STAR WARS became a creative space for multiple generations of folks that believe in the imaginings of what happens in the distant lights we see in the universe around us. It has always been about possibilities and dreams - and the PREQUEL trilogy was the story George was dying to tell. The Sequel Trilogy is for us.... those of us that sat in theaters and saw all of this play out - and then stopped for 15 mysterious years, where WE dreamt of what happened next... And if the voice is Benedict Cumberbatch and he fucking is Blue with Red Fucking Eyes - and is Grand Admiral Thrawn... I will be the biggest droolmonster on planet Earth! Though, I probably already am.
And just so you don't have to click to another story to watch this trailer a whole bunch...
