STAR WARS:The Force Awakens and Breaking Down all the Chaos

by Christopher Barr │POSTED ON NOVEMBER 29, 2014

STAR WARS:  The Force Awakens has had a teaser trailer released that tells of a great awakening that has clearly stirred a more peaceful time in the galaxy so very far away. 

There has been an awakening.  Have you felt it? 

The teaser fades up on a desert plain with a desperate looking man in Storm Trooper armour without a helmet, which would be the first time that these pawns of the Empire have been humanized, or is this man in a Storm Trooper disguise reminiscent of the garbage compactor scene in A New Hope.  He clearly has just been through something bad, breathing heavy and looking discombobulated as he flees.

We then see a droid whose torso is this spinning soccer-type ball with an R2D2 type helmet on top cruising along or away from something in a hurry.  Then we see the inside of a dropship lined with Storm Troopers in teal lighting readying themselves to deploy, as the landing ramp lowers and they presumably take the safety’s off of their weapons.

We then see a young woman, Daisy Ridley on a land speeder with a concerned look on her face as she speeds off along the desert prairie.  Then a man with the Rebel Alliance, Oscar Isaac is in an X-Wing fighter speeding along the surface of a body of water with a number of other X-Wing fighters, ostensibly readying themselves for battle, perhaps against the recently deployed Storm Troopers.

The Darkside….

We then cut to a black-cloaked figure stumbling in a snowy dark forest, hurrying along when he snaps out a lightsaber and igniting it, forcing the recognizable red beam of light upward forming a laser blade.  But that’s not it, two mini red beams jutting horizontally out of the base of the lightsaber into a hilt.  This Sith Lord prepares to fight some unseen adversary ahead of him in the dark of the woods.

…and the Light.

Then the recognizable John Williams score kicks in as the Millennium Falcon hurls in the afternoon sky intercepting a couple of TIE Fighters as it flips and speeds by them engaging in a dogfight.

The iconic Star Wars logo, with The Force Awakens wedged between, in space appears with the music at a high and then falling silent to which the sound of a lightsaber engaging can be heard.

End of Teaser.

There have already been a number of likes and dislikes about this teaser trailer roaming the hallways of the internet.  For the most part though I would say that what J.J Abrams and company attempted to achieve with this first look at their epic film was effective.  Note that there were no space scenes; everything in the teaser take place in a planetary atmosphere, presumably Tatooine.  Abrams is clearly keeping his space scenes under wraps as he should.  We’re all going anyway and he knows it so there is no reason in spoiling too much.

The Problems:

It has Star Wars familiarities in it but it doesn’t thus far look and feel like a Star Wars movie.

The Droid with the spinning body, soccer ball thingy, nitpicky I know, seemed a bit silly to be honest, kids will love it, so that’s okay.

The landspeeder that Daisy Ridley is riding looks like a Popsicle and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

The hilt on the Sith’s lightsaber made me think immediately that that’s a recipe for disaster.  I know, he knows the force and it won’t hit him in the face as he swings his lightsaber around.

What I like about it:

There is this eerie sense of dread about it, everyone in running away or toward something with purpose, whether it’s to save themselves or kill something.

The Storm Troopers looked bad ass.

The X-Wing fighter looked incredibly cool.

The Sith Lord in the woods was sort of awesome, especially how he pulled out his lightsaber and snapped it on.

The big payoff for me, as I assume it was for a lot of people, was seeing the Millennium Falcon fly again, and not only fly but fly well in an exciting way, similar to that of the asteroid sequence in Empire.  Beautiful stuff really.  If there were any chills, thrills and childhood exhilarating memories surfacing, it was at this moment.

The film is still in post-production and will be for some time so what we got to see was pretty good stuff.  It’s a teaser so of course we weren’t going to see much, just enough meat for the internet wolves to chew on while Abrams finishes his movie.  This also allows for the internet to explode with theories and love or hate for the film, long before its release and thus lets out some of the built up air that’s inflating this production.  It’s not going to be perfect and it won’t be as good as The Empire Strikes Back but hopefully in the end, it will be a fun film that invites us into that world that most of us grew up on.  This is when the therapist chimes in and says that the past is there for examination while one navigates the present, the past is not there to be replicated in the present.  J.J Abrams, love him or hate him, is going to make his own movie, but we should at least take solace in the fact that he too was brought up on Star Wars and wouldn’t want to ruin that, even for him.