New “Star Wars VII” Trailer is AMAZING!

HOLY CRAP! This teaser trailer is killer!

This is precisely what I wanted to see in a first teaser trailer: a few of the characters, a few of the locations, a newly envisioned light-saber design, the Millennium Falcon, and all around just a much better visual execution than the last three prequel films.

So here’s the sexy trailer itself.

Alright, so let me just break down for you exactly why this teaser is so damn good, and all of the little things in it that already spell good news for Star Wars: Episode VII, due next Christmas.

One:

The voice over during the entire trailer sounds like Bennedict Cumberbatch. I still can’t say for sure if it is him. But if it is, then he may likely just be doing a voice-over for the film, rather than playing a live role. So already we’re off to a promising start.

Two:

We’re getting more unique robot designs, and likely ones created from actual in-camera objects rather than all CGI.

Three:

The storm trooper are back, better than ever, and they seem to have a few suit and helmet upgrades since 30 years ago. But thankfully they’ve kept the classic look going.

Four:

The atmosphere and the lighting are top-notch. George Lucas seemed to just rely on his digital artists to create the look of each shot after wards, rather than conceptualize each shot before hand and work in live cinematography as well. Each shot just seemed so flat and rushed. But here, almost every shot works to increase intrigue and build tension, as the music is ramping up. The storm troopers have this amazing dark turquoise color going, which makes things feel uneasy. There’s that great shot of the X-wings gliding across a frosty land-scape with that backlighting and those low gray tones. Feels almost like Skyrim.

Five:

No lens flares. I’m sure we’re going to be punked a bit and were going to get more than we expected when the actual film comes out. But so far, there are very very few if any lens flares that I can see during this entire trailer. So chances are J.J. actually pulled back a bit on his lens flare fetish for the sake of tradition, and tried to make this fit as close to the Star Wars universe as he could. And there definitely is a bit of an Empire Strikes Back vibe going on here, which is really really good.

Six:

The lightsabors look amazing. Rather than sticking the same old perfect glowing rod of light, they opted to go for a reimagined design where the energy now flows out like lightning and bursting flames rather than a pristine cone. This may still not be the design for every light sabor that we’ll see, but at least as far as Sith sabors are concerned, this is a really bad-ass design choice. Very menacing.

Seven:

The “grit” is back. Not just grit and age as far as designs go, because even the prequels had a bit of that. But “grit” in the sense that the style of shot design, production design, cinematography, color choices: it all comes together to give this world a much needed grounding in reality that was sorely lost during Attack of the Clones, because even The Phantom Menace still had some on location shooting and some grit to its CGI. But now we have truly returned to where we left off with Jedi. Now we are back to what made Star Wars such a stark contrast to Star Trek: it has age, it has grit, it has a reality to it.

Eight:

The freaking… Millennium… FALCON!

This is it folks. This is IT, right here. That has to be the best possible way you could reintroduce the Millennium Falcon ever. One of the things we never actually saw in the original films was anything like the size of the Millennium Falcon, or the Falcon itself, getting into dog fights while close to a planet’s surface. Only the X-Wings and the Landspeeders ever did that. So this is visually and conceptually a good change of pace. It shows that this film is going to be its own new thing while also building off elements we all know and love. And it seems to be doing it in a much wiser way than the prequels did. The Falcon seems to also have its own share of upgrades and new details. So I’ll be excited to get a closer look at the thing when its docked in port.

Bottom line, if you have a problem with this trailer, or a problem with how this movie is turning out, then you must be a moron: because you don’t get much more promising than this. All of the stars have aligned in order to give us our best chance at a new trilogy of amazing Star Wars films that won’t show us contempt or make us feel stupid. And they will actually respect the original films and pay homage to them in the best ways possible. But these new films will also hopefully bring some new things to the universe, and will expand upon what we already know by giving certain things more identity.

So I for one am very pleased with this teaser. It is precisely what I had hoped it would be, and it has given me the confidence to firmly stand beside the film as we wait for its eventual release around this time next year.

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