The new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is intriguing, although I confess that it hasn’t really made me more excited about the movie that will be in cinemas in December. It took a while until the music or the action in the trailer started to really connect with me – although when it did so, it was wonderful. Perhaps that was the point – to drop us into a world that we think ought to be familiar, and which is in some ways, and yet only later show that not everything that we expect to find there has disappeared. And there is something compelling about the scenario we are shown – that what really happened on Endor, and on the second Death Star under construction, is the stuff of rumor and legend rather than history.
The big question that everyone is asking is why Luke Skywalker isn’t in the trailer. I can think of two possible answers, and to be honest, either would be very interesting, and one would connect up with an alternative way that George Lucas contemplated having Return of the Jedi end.
One is that we don’t get to see him until the end of the movie, and he then becomes central to the next two films.
The other is that Kylo Ren is in fact Luke Skywalker, who went far enough in the direction of the dark side in his encounter with Emperor Palpatine to have decided that he is indeed meant to continue his father’s legacy – to bring balance to the Force, rather than just goodness.
What do you think of the trailer? What are your biggest hopes and fears related to Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens? And do you have your tickets yet?
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