Trailer Trashin’: Scanning the Second Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer

It’s here, dear readers. Our long wait is over, because Avengers: Age of Ultron has finally opened stateside. But even more exciting than that, I’m going on vacation! I’ll be out of town for the next couple weeks, and in order to not deprive you of Trailer Trashin’, I’ve written four columns that will make their way to you over the next week or so, covering four of the biggest trailers that dropped in the later part of April. The next of these is the second teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Premise: The Force Awakens is set approximately thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983), and features three new leads alongside characters returning from previous Star Wars films.

My take: The trailer opens with a slow pan across the surface of a desert planet – which is called Jakku, as we learned during a panel at Star Wars Celebration earlier in April – accompanied by the notes of John Williams’ classic Star Wars theme. We can just make out a small object speeding across the bottom of the frame, which is likely Rey (Daisy Ridley) on her speeder bike, which we saw in the first teaser. Both an Imperial Star Destroyer and a Rebel X-Wing fighter are buried in the dunes; judging by their state of decay and the sand piled up around them, they’ve both been there for quite some time.

We hear the voice of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) saying, “The Force is strong in my family.” We see the melted helmet and mask of Darth Vader, whom Luke burned on a funeral pyre after Vader died at the end of Return of the Jedi, set atop a gleaming black pedestal. But where is it being kept? Has Luke been hanging onto his dear departed dad’s head all this time? Or did someone steal it? Perhaps someone tied to the dark side of the Force? Luke’s voiceover continues, “My father has it.” Does the use of present tense there mean we might see a Force Ghost of the late Anakin Skywalker? Or is it referring to the symbolic sense of parents living on through their children?

We next see R2-D2 and a kneeling figure with a robotic hand wearing a dark cloak. Luke’s voiceover continues, “I have it,” so we can assume the cloaked figure is Luke himself. He and R2 are in a gloomy, windswept place, lit by what seems like an off-screen fire.

We next see a small, probably alien, hand passing a lightsaber to the hands of a female human. Given that Luke’s voiceover says here “My sister has it,” we can assume the female human in question is Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). And that isn’t just any lightsaber, it’s the lightsaber that used to belong to Anakin Skywalker, was given to Luke by Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars (1977), and was lost when Darth Vader chopped off Luke’s right hand during their battle in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). But how and where did this alien find that lightsaber?

As the screen fades to black, Luke’s voiceover finishes with “You have that power too.” Clearly, Luke is talking to one of the new younger characters, one that has a connection to the Force. But we don’t know which new character it is.

We now start to get quick cutting between different shots. A group of X-Wing fighters swoop over a huge lake on a lush forest planet. Inside one of them, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) lets out a triumphant whoop. One of our new villains, the masked and hooded Kylo Ren (rumored to be the character played by Adam Driver), swings his cross-guard lightsaber, standing in a dark place with smoke and fire around him. On the surface of Jakku, Rey, Fin (John Boyega), and the ball-like droid BB-8 run away from a massive explosion; note the TIE fighter in the sky above, in the top-left of the frame, which must be trying to take out our young heroes. Back on the fire-and-smoke place, white-armored Stormtroopers face down a gathered crowd of people, while in the foreground, Kylo Ren whips around, lightsaber at the ready and holding up his hand as though about to attack using the Force.

On an icy planet, we see a huge gathering of the forces of the First Order, as the reborn Galactic Empire is apparently called – a legion of Stormtroopers, the new black-colored TIE fighters, and big gun turrets reminiscent of the turbo-lasers on the old Death Star. A massive red banner hangs in the background, adorned with the black emblem of the First Order. And while it’s impossible to identify them from this distance, the figure dressed in black standing on the platform in the center background is clearly someone of importance.

Rey glances upward, clearly nervous about something as a pair of the new black TIE fighters swoop through the air. Inside the hanger of a large First Order ship, a TIE fighter appears to have gone rogue, blasting away with its laser cannons while Stormtroopers on the deck return fire and an explosion rocks the hanger. Finn, seen here in his Stormtrooper armor, removes his helmet, clearly in distress; the metallic surface behind him, the orange glow reflected by his armor, and what looks like a bloody handprint on his helmet all seem to indicate that this takes place in the same scene as the previous shot.

Out in space, several First Order shuttles fly toward a larger ship, likely a new version of the Star Destroyer. A Stormtrooper wearing a shiny chrome version of the armor walks through a corridor that is metal on one side and rock on the other, possibly indicating some kind of underground base. This character is rumored to be named Captain Phasma, and believed to be played by Gwendoline Christie. She is a commander of the Stormtroopers, and is likely one of the major villains, along with Kylo Ren.

The droid BB-8 peeks around a corner. If those beat-up ship interiors look familiar, that’s because it’s none other than the corridors of the Millennium Falcon. Down on what looks like a ruined settlement on Jakku, Rey offers her hand to Finn, who again looks like he’s been put through the ringer. He takes her hand and she pulls him to his feet.

On another part of Jakku, the Millennium Falcon flies low over the planet surface, chased by a TIE fighter. The Falcon flies into the engine of a huge crashed ship, possibly the same old Star Destroyer we saw at the beginning of the trailer. The TIE follows it inside, and we get a nice shot of the TIE pilot in his creepy black helmet. The chase continues inside the guts of the crashed ship’s engines, in a manner similar to the chase through the core of the second Death Star during the climax of Return of the Jedi. The TIE fires its laser cannons, but the Falcon dodges and the blasts instead blow up part of the surrounding wreck.

Finally, we get the single best moment of this teaser, the one that filled the hearts of Star Wars fans everywhere with joy. We hear a familiar voice say, “Chewie, we’re home.” And we see Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) standing side-by-side in a corridor of the Millennium Falcon. A little smile appears on Han’s face, and Chewie lets out his familiar yowl. But when Han says “home,” does he mean they’re back on the Falcon after being away with it for some time?

This is an amazing teaser. It shows us more of what we wanted after the first teaser back in November, particularly by showing us some of the returning original cast. But at the same time, they’re still holding back a lot, keeping things under wraps and not showing us everything. At this point, there’s no doubt that I’ll be checking out Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens when it opens in December.

ANTICIPATION: The Force is strong with this film.