Trailer Review: The Force Awakens final trailer

So, the new and last trailer for Episode VII aired last night on the ESPN football stuff show and this morning my Feedly was full of reviews of the thing. I felt I should say something as well. Here it is if you haven’t seen it yet.

So this is the only trailer. The others were “teasers”. So I don’t feel bad for not reviewing them. Okay, I’ll talk about them a little.

(Should this be in Commercial Commentaries? Oh, well.)

Of course, I made plans to go see this movie as soon as I heard it was being made. But the trailers have only re-enforced that. The first teaser (which came out around last Thanksgiving. Good grief.) was great. It gave everybody, including me, confidence that the movie was going to be good.

My reaction to it was pretty much that it looked like Original Trilogy story with Prequel Trilogy cinematography. Since I’m a fan of the OT primarily for the story and the PT primarily for the cinematography, I was excited.

The second teaser came out after some more information had come out about who the new characters were, so it was cool to see them.

Of course the appearance of Han Solo and Chewbacca was the most talked about bit, but the rest really showed that Disney money off. The second teaser was also the point at which I began to see this as something new, rather than just a melding of old Star Wars movies. I recognized more of JJ Abrams’ style in it, but it still seemed very Star Wars.

I guess I should mention the poster that was revealed a few days ago. It’s done by the same guy who did the posters for the Prequels. Daisy Ridley’s Rey [last name withheld] is up front and center, along with John Boyega’s Finn [last name also withheld] and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren (not real name. Actually, the names of new characters have been a weird little time, haven’t they. Between names that are secret spoilers and names like “Captain Phasma”, things are getting a bit preposterous.) There’s also some round thing that people think might be a new Death Star, but it could be something else.

The biggest thing with the poster is, if you haven’t heard or noticed yourself, the marked abscence of Luke Skywalker. I have nothing to say about this. Perhaps Luke isn’t a major character in this movie.

So, on to the trailer itself. We open with Rey scavenging the wreckage of the Star Destroyer we first saw crashed on Jakku in the second teaser.

Then we see a bit of Finn.

Finn’s TIE fighter is shot down and he crashes on Jakku. The shots of the crashing ship are some of the best space scenes I’ve seen in Star Wars, superior to everything but the opening scenes of Revenge of the Sith.

Then we see Kylo Ren.

What’s more, we hear Kylo Ren. Yeah, yeah, I know there was a toy talking Kylo Ren mask released on Force Friday with some recorded audio coming out of it, but that doesn’t count. His voice sounds like Adam Driver doing a James Earl Jones impression, and, considering what little we know about his character, that makes perfect sense. It is Kylo Ren who recovered Darth Vader’s burned remains first shown in the second teaser. He promises the mask to continue what Vader started.

We’re given a brief glimpse of Oscar Issac’s Poe Dameron, an X-Wing pilot who eventually gets to fly a cool black-and-orange X-Wing, according to Lego. We don’t see this, just the white-and-blue ones we’ve seen in the teasers. Dameron shows up a few more times, but he doesn’t seem to be the focus.

There’s a shot that I find interesting:

There’s heavy rain obscuring people here. Kylo Ren is identified by his unique lightsaber. The other figures may be other Knights of Ren.

We’re shown some shots of air battles in several locations, and the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace. These are very dynamic shots that don’t translate well to screengrabbing. There is a shot of Leia, finally.

She looks rather distressed.

The trailer closes with Finn weilding a lightsaber against Kylo Ren, in the snowy forest where we first saw Kylo Ren in the first teaser.

Cool.

So, to be honest, I didn’t get as excited watching this as I did the teasers, probably because the teasers showed us everything in the trailer already. There are knew shots and scenes, but the same concepts are presented. Overall, though, this is a great trailer. It makes you want to watch the movie without spoiling a single scene. Seriously, we have a setting and characters, but we still don’t know what the story of this movie is going to be.

So that’s my review. Not as great as the teasers, but still really good. I’ll certainly be seeing Episode VII come December, probably not opening day (I hate crowded theaters more than I like Star Wars. And I do really like Star Wars.) but certainly as soon as possible afterwards. You can expect a review here soon after. May the Force be with you until then.

All photos screenshots of the official Force Awakens Trailer, unless otherwise noted.