The new "Star Wars" trailer

Gee, you're no fun!

 

The Force is supposed to be a supernatural mystic spirit guiding all sentient life in the galaxy.

It makes Luke's pronouncement more significant if it's really a vow resounding both backward and forward in time, redeeming Anakin for the tragic doomed decision he made a generation earlier and standing as a beacon inviolate for the Skywalkers yet to come.

Otherwise, Luke is really saying, "Uh, well, you've kinda failed, your highness. I'll never turn to the Dark Side, well, probably not today, anyway. I am a Jedi, like my father before me. But you can take a run at my sister, or come back in 20-30 years and get one of my kids. So yeah, you've kinda failed."

There will be plenty of other characters they can dick around and tempt with possible falls to the Dark Side.

But having the next Skywalker generations fall (or not fall) to the Dark Side is just the most stupid, boring and cliched crap imaginable. They already spent six movies on that stuff. It's why most of the EU stuff sucked and was thankfully ditched.

 

Maybe it's not smart to judge the average American moviegoer by this board, but this sentence made me think about this: It's so strange to me the way people reflexively complain about how awful it is to see a shitty movie in the theater, to the point they complain about how shitty a movie will be before they even see it in the theater and practically boast about how they wouldn't be caught dead seeing this movie or that movie in the theater.

Nobody complains about spending $12 on a shitty album. They simply stop listening to it and move on. Nobody complains about seeing a shitty football game. A 49-0 score doesn't make anybody say, "That's 3.5 hours of my life I'll never get back." But if someone sees a lousy movie, they inevitably complain about the stale popcorn, the loud teenagers, the air conditioning, the film itself and, eventually, they swear off seeing another movie in the theater again.

There's something unique about the way we complain about the movies and I really don't get it. I mean, a lousy football game costs at least 10x as much as a lousy movie, yet the vitriol directed at the theater experience will be at least 10x greater than the vitriol directed at the stadium experience. And there's at least a 10x greater chance that you'll get beat up, stabbed or shot at the football game. It's just kind of weird to me.

 

I agree with JimmyHoward that the journey was Luke's, not anyone else's, so if some Skywalker offspring fall prey to the Dark Side, it does nothing to ruin the moment Luke defied the Emperor. Though I speculated on another thread that the absence of Luke from all advertising so far could portend a fall to the Dark Side, I think he's the only one who CAN'T fall to it because that would invalidate the journey of the previous six movies.

I see your point, though, about having just spent six movies watching the Skywalkers try to avoid succumbing to the Dark Side (Anakin does, Luke doesn't), so spending another three on a similar story arc will be treading the same territory. Then again, it's 1-1 right now, and Americans hate a tie, so Game 3 for the Skywalker legacy between Dark and Light could be a compelling elimination game.

 

He has NOT been absent. He's the main focal point of the second trailer. And as noted earlier in this thread, they show the same scene in last night's new trailer (him puting his robtic hand on R2-D2) that they show in the second trailer.

 

Right, I'm the one who noted that. He is absent from the movie poster (which prompted my spitballing speculation that perhaps he wasn't absent, after all, and that maybe he's under Kylo Ren's mask) and they have made a concerted effort not to show what Mark Hamill looks like in the film. Perhaps shrouded would have been a better term.

 

John Boyega and Daisy Ridley's reactions to the trailer were pretty fun.

Watch members of the new Star Wars cast react to seeing themselves in the trailer

 

Both of those were just awesome. It shows just how much these kids care about doing this series. So cool.

 

A couple of thoughts.

-- I like the look of the trailers so I am excited.
-- Remember that the trailers deliberately show what the producer/director wants to show so trying to piece together a narrative is next to impossible.
-- I was excited about The Phantom Menace back in 1999 and reading a lot of the speculation out there. I vividly remember a very large piece in USA Today about a week before the movie was set to premier. In it, they speculated that Jar Jar Binks was going to be the break out character/fan favorite based on previews. I have since never again listened or cared much for hype movie speculation.
-- With that being said, I am taking the counter. The character of Finn is likely not a stormtrooper, but is going under cover. He is definitely force sensitive. He may ...may have been trained as a jedi by Luke and is now on his own for some reason or was sent on a mission to track down Han or Rey or both.

 

Maybe he hasn't quite fallen to the Dark Side but has become a grumpy old man telling kids to keep off of his sand patch and scrapes together a living by voicing cartoon villains.

 

Dear god, "very" unique.