The Biggest Takeaways from the New Star Wars Trailer

Almost halfway through 2019 and news about the last Star Wars movie in the original saga was nowhere to be found. No images, no trailers, not even the fucking title?! This caused many fans, me included, to worry, among many other reasons, about the fate of episode IX. This Friday at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago, a trailer was released with some answers and (in typical Star Wars fashion) a lot more questions that should tide fans over until December 20^th, when the film is released.

I will never pretend to be a Star Wars nerd, but I was in Chicago for most of the weekend surrounding several Star Wars events and here are my biggest takeaways, the positives and negatives (light and dark side if you will), after having conversations with these sweaty, cloak-wearing, lightsaber-wielding fanboys. May the force be with me.

Light Side: J.J. Abrams is Back!

I know the general consensus after A Force Awakens, said that he followed the template of A New Hope too close to the chest with fan service and nostalgia, (wait they’re really building another death star?), but he did introduce a lot of great new characters and villains and successfully captured the tone and aesthetic of the franchise. His characters are back in the trailer with Rey doing a force flip over a flying ship (Kylo Ren’s?), BB-8 with a new buddy and Kylo Ren raging out again, this time clotheslining somebody (take that mom!).

For all of his plays on nostalgia, Abrams is known in the industry as a franchise fixer, similar to how Dwayne Johnson brought life back to the Fast and Furious franchise. He directed entries in the Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, all at times when they weren’t exactly booming, and now they are all successful franchises in the digital era. It’s impossible to know if Abrams is exactly what made all of these franchises successful in the modern era, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and there’s no doubt that if Force Awakens didn’t reenergize the franchise, Disney would not be handing out Star Wars spinoff movies like Oprah giving away cars. (Look under your seat, you’re all getting lightsabers!)

Dark Side: JJ is Back…

“But I thought you said you liked that!” I know I said that I’m a fan of Abrams’ return, but this is more of a concern regarding the overall narrative of the Star Wars saga as a whole based on what the trailer is saying. Let’s stick with just the new trilogy. In the Force Awakens, Abrams sets up questions like, “who are Rey’s parents?”, and The Last Jedi answered them, saying they were nobody and that legacy does not matter. Even Snoke’s identity which was speculated about for months before the release was left unexplained and unimportant.

Kylo’s temper tantrum where he smashes his helmet to pieces was symbolic of Rian Johnson destroying the ideology that built the saga up to that point. In the trailer, we see Kylo soldering his helmet back together and this is Abrams having to fix what Johnson (purposely) broke in the Last Jedi. Now imagine binging the new trilogy and having these conflicting messages in back to back movies.

This made me open to maybe another director coming in to finish the trilogy originally, but who would want the challenge of fixing this franchise? None other than go to industry fixer: JJ Abrams. The Rise of the Skywalker trailer is already is giving me the feels about what could have been if Abrams did the entire trilogy. Maybe in another galaxy far, far away…

Light Side: Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian and Darth Sidious (?) Return

Many speculated about whether they would kill off Princess Leia in The Last Jedi, especially after the real-life death of Carrie Fisher, and in typical Last Jedi fashion, Johnson opted to make her an invincible Mary Poppins instead. Leia’s presence in the new movie, will be another thing Abrams will have to fix, but he apparently used leftover footage from Force Awakens and not de-aging CGI, like Disney has done before (thank God).

Lando’s return is another thing fans have been looking forward to after they announced Billy Dee Williams would return last year, and seeing Donald Glover bring a younger version of his character to life in Solo: A Star Wars Story, made the hype even greater. Seeing him fly next to Chewbacca again in the trailer gave me goosebumps. I seriously hope there are no more death stars in here, even though there is a shot of the wreckage of one in the trailer.

Luke says in the trailer “no one’s ever really gone” followed by Darth Sidious’ laugh in the closing seconds of the trailer, which was a very shocking moment since he has thought to have been dead since The Return of the Jedi (1983). As seen with Darth Maul in Solo: A Star Wars Story last year, surviving a fall from large distances isn’t impossible, but Sidious’ fall felt pretty final given that it gave off a huge energy blast. I brought up the fact that he might come back as a “Sith ghost”, much like the Jedis have been doing forever and some Chicago Star Wars fan confirmed that they do exist in some form, although I’m not sure if they’re canon in the new Disney timeline.

Dark Side: The Title

The official title for episode IX is Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Assuming what we’ve seen from the previous movies, the only Skywalker left is Leia, and it’s impossible that she plays a huge role in the movie so who’s rising? This brings up old questions from The Force Awakens about Rey’s origins again, but also force ghosts are a thing and it’s possible that Luke can come back (he narrates the trailer). Compared to the rest of the subtitles: The Phantom Menace; Attack of the Clones; Revenge of the Sith; The Force Awakens; and The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker just seems pretty lazy and lame. Maybe time has aged the titles well in the context of their movies, but the last three titles Disney has put out have left a lot to be desired. The silver lining for me is that I appreciate the blue font and lightsaber that Rey had in the trailer, which does correlate to the Skywalker’s—it’s been in the family for three generations now. Or maybe it just means we’re going to see more blue milk in this one. Either way the title is still better than Solo: A Star Wars Story, so that has to count for something.