Star Wars: The Force Awakens…WHAT???

I just saw the trailer for J.J Abrams flagship production for a new generation of Star Wars, a movie projected to have a two hundred million dollar budget.

Now bear in mind I have been known to be wrong my assertions (quite a bit sometimes) and jumping the gun is rarely a way to ensure proper judgement on a matter.

But isn’t a trailer supposed to actually make you want to WATCH the movie in question, even a teaser? Especially a teaser?

Lets take this piece by piece. I include speculation and good old fashioned rage. I was hyped as hell to see the new spin they put to this franchise, wresting it from the incompetent hands of it’s one time creator George Lucas who had turned a once respectable science fiction/fantasy series into a laughing stock.

It’s depressing to me now that watching the new trailer made me think ‘The prequels might have had awful acting and writing…but at least they made me EXCITED to see the films in theaters!’

Even Avatar (a movie I despised) at least in the trailer told me this was something new and wondrous. The story might have been worthless but there was an attempt to put forth a vibrant new world the likes of which the silver screen had never seen before.

On the flip side…

So we kick off with some kind of ‘Not Yoda’ voice declaring ‘An Awakening’. It sounds a little like Benedict Cumberbatch actually which is both good and bad. He was a fine Smaug voice and a great Sherlock, but he hammed up Star Trek: Into Darkness pretty badly. A role it occurs to me that had him making grim pronouncements with cliche language…kind of like the beginning of this trailer.
Then we fade in on the most interesting thing in the world, especially for the first sight of a long dormant beloved series returning to vibrant life after so very long a wait.

We see…a desert. An empty desert.

Enthralling.

We hold on this after fading to it for a good sit. I…just don’t get it. Were they afraid that unless we saw Tatooine we’d forget this was supposed to be Star Wars? Here’s the thing guys. Tatooine…IS BORING! There’s not much that alien or interesting about it. It’s literally a planet covered in sand. It was so boring that Luke Skywalker couldn’t wait to LEAVE it in the first movie and in the prequels when the first movie spent so long wandering around in the same desert wastelands, did the audience thank that movie for doing them favors? Quite the opposite. Naboo might have had annoying frog creatures but at least it had TREES.
So this is our introduction to our new Star Wars: a flat expanse of completely featureless sand.
Honestly I’ve seen zero-budget independent movies with better production values.

Moving on we have our first shock. SURPRISE! BLACK GUY!

That sure doesn’t look like Temuera Morrison.

He looks around and heads off towards…nothing. No spaceships. No groups of other Stormtroopers. No creatures.

He literally just walks off screen like he’s as confused as we are.

Now this guy doesn’t look that Australian to me. Or white. So clearly he isn’t a clone which the previous films all but established that the Stormtroopers were. I guess J.J Abrams is once again bucking the established backstory for his own purposes which is actually fine with me. I always found the Stormtroopers more interesting without them being clones anyway (although it does make our heroes of The Rebel Alliance pretty murderous of loyalist soldiers than given the original trilogy).

So…a Stormtrooper. He’s not a clone. He’s in the desert. Should this mean anything? Get me excited?

Well I guess I’m intrigued but this is a really weird way to kick off the new Star Wars. Not to mention it all but shoves in your face the oft-stated complaint of politically correct devotees everywhere: WHERE ARE THE BLACK PEOPLE IN STAR WARS?

Leaving aside the utterly contemptible condescention assumed that there must be people of every ethnic background crammed into films just to make some kind of quota or to satisfy the poor, huddled minority masses who won’t watch anything unless the people on screen share their pigment, this strikes me as too much compensation. It’s like waving a banner that says THERE ARE BLACK PEOPLE IN THIS MOVIE.

Okay. So…is this guy actually a prominent character at all? Does he wander off screen and never come back or is he eaten by a monster seconds after the screen fades out in this scene? Does he have a name? Does he have any lines?

I’m not impressed just because you get to parade your inclusivity, or impression thereof.

Who knows, he might turn out to be the main character, but if that’s the case at least have him be DOING something, not just sweating in the middle of a boring as literal dirt desert.

And from this we smoothly transition to…

What…the…?

Sigh…Jingle Droid.

This…thing…looks like an unholy combination of R2-D2 and one of those push toys you find in preschools. It trundles on it’s fake little CGI way and it’s almost like the mocking spirit of George Lucas itself, sneering at us for hating Jar Jar Binks and daring us to get over this new wholly unnecessary inevitable comic relief. Again, maybe it’s just in the movie for a few seconds or it’s just in the background or it’s a main character. I have no way of knowing.

What I have to ask though is…WHY?

J.J this isn’t very impressive CGI all things considered. It’s not a compelling character by any stretch of the imagination either. I have no idea why you’d want to stick a droid of a trundle wheel unless you honestly just wanted to mess with the thing. Where can it go? Why make something that moves SLOWER than just sticking a pair of tires on it?

I just hope it doesn’t speak in a high pitched voice or something. Or do slapstick. Or become pivotal to the plot.

Or exist.

This one image over any other tells me at least now that Star Wars is not only NOT going to improve with this latest statement, it may somehow impossibly get much, much worse even without George to include his own brand of crazy and pointless.

I could be wrong (I’d like to be) but I can tell a toy plea when I see one.

Star Wars. You used to be unintentionally called children’s entertainment, but it looks like it’s not only literal now, it’s official.

Maybe Disney demanded this thing after Frozen’s Olaf snowman character proved so marketable…sorry…IMPORTANT to the plot for Frozen.

Then we’re in for Stormtoopers in some kind of troop carrier bathed in blue light because they wouldn’t like quite so fake and plasticky if they weren’t.

I always felt that Star Wars could use shaky cam.

But clearly we’re supposed to be impressed again. Look! There’s at LEAST half a dozen of them, and they’re on the world’s most featureless, boring scout ship! Then the door opens revealing…nothing.

Maybe when they finally make a trailer instead of a teaser they’ll finally fill in all the blue screens. Or add props.

Turning now to our inevitable main character, a WOMEN this time!

See guys? J.J’s not sexist OR racist! He just obsesses about gender and ethnic differences!

It’s like a land speeder only bigger, uglier, dumber and harder to park. 

And she’s dressed like Luke Skywalker because if she wasn’t we wouldn’t know she was a hero. Or in a Star Wars movie.

Remember that Star Wars movie that made the mistake of setting parts of it in DIFFERENT climates than we were used to from the previous films? One battle was set on a frozen moon and another scene in a city in the clouds and there were some scenes set in a swamp? NOBODY liked that movie so I’m glad that J.J learned his lesson: change nothing, keep repeating the same ideas and images, and directly ripoff the classic aesthetics for no real reason. That’s what fantasy filmmaking is all about.

Honestly, who even remembers this movie?

So she CGIs off on her big, stupid flying electric razor and suddenly we switch to X-Wngs!

I don’t know if this is actually supposed to be Zev Senesca (AKA Rogue 2 who finds Luke Skywalker) especially since the actor playing the character passed away, but it sure looks like him, and it would also be the first indication I was actually watching an official Star Wars movie instead of a fan-film or the trailer for a video game.

Then the X-Wings fly pointlessly close enough to the lake to cause it to flare up beneath them. It’s all very pretty I suppose, but the question does arise: WHY ARE THEY CGI? Seriously? We SAW Abrams standing with a real X-Wing model with working cockpit during a charity stream. Lucas got by fine without making his X-Wings CGI once, and you can’t tell me they had to be CGI to pull off the water trick. Ever thought about CGI on the water but NOT on the models? That way they might actually look…real? Maybe? Am I a million years behind the times or is this too much to expect?

I hate un-skippable cutscenes.

And the next scene…will probably live in infamy.

Here we are in a frozen forest directed in such a way I swear with a few downgrades to the costume and upcoming special effect you’d swear this was filmed in someone’s backyard during the winter.

A guy in black robes staggers across the snow and draws a lightsaber. I’ll say this at least: it’s the first and only saber in the teaser. That must have taken a lot of restraint, especially for Disney which was probably going through the footage and looking for all instances of those shiny glow-sticks that kids love to buy in bulk.

This guy (clearly a Sith or some kind of proximally) draws his saber and for a moment I get excited. That sound! That hum and that glow! It’s like my childhood has come again! I’ve been waiting YEARS to see light sabers again in a real Star Wars movie and here we are at last. I’m almost ready to forgive the wonky directing, the pompous and pointless narrator, the unimpressive and pointless CGI just for the chance to see one of the most original, iconic, simple and elegant weapons in history blaze forth once again finally showing once and for all that you don’t need stupid gimmicks and extraneous effects, all you need is an inspired concept and imagination and…

Necessary!

Ugh…

It had to have some kind of stupid extra feature, because God knows everyone felt that Star Wars Episode 1 was pretty disappointing, but the fact that Darth Maul had a TWO-BLADED lightsaber made up for everything.

This is again trying so hard, and at the moment appearing to fail equally badly. It seems like an attempt to one up Episode 1 with something cool added to the lightsaber idea. In the trailer there’s even a pause before the two little blades pop out as if the audience is supposed to gasp in shock at the ingenuity and wonder at the possibilities…instead of laugh at the concept of a LASER SWORD with a hilt MADE OUT OF LASERS.

Again notable is the fact that his guy is pulling out his sword in order to fight…nobody. Maybe they forgot to add the effect or he just heard a twig snap or he’s just ticked off for no reason today and wanted to vent. It all might prove to be a genius move and a great idea leading to a really awesome battle.

But for now, like so much of this trailer, it strikes me as proving that Star Wars is washed up and out of ideas rather than suggesting otherwise. We got a cross-shaped light saber! Why?

To…block lightsabers I guess? Does he have a light dagger to fight with in his off hand?

Or is it just there to make light sabers ‘new’ so they can be marketed all over again?

I’ll reserve judgement…except when I don’t. It’s probably the last unfortunately.

And after wading through this cavalcade of apathy, retread, and surpassingly lifeless clips we have to close out with a bang, right? We need a final image of cement the notion that Star Wars is BACK baby!

You’re going to pre-order tickets now to get ahead of the rush because this last image is going to blow your socks off so hard your feet will go with them. This is it. The showstopper. That moment in the teaser everyone is going to go back to over and over again to marvel at the detail and technical wizardry on display, the sights and sounds they’ve never seen before.

This is it. The main Star Wars theme is going to kick in and we’re going to see something amazing followed by the title at last to prove once and for all that J.J isn’t half-assing this. He’s bringing it back, kicking it into gear, and setting it loose on the world!

Yay.

J.J is half-assing this.

I might be proved wrong about all my speculations, but this is pretty damning right here. The Falcon is CGI. The Tie-Fighters are CGI. The landscape they’re both flying over is CGI.

It looks like a video game cutscene, and Blizzard actually makes better cutscenes than this!

Did I lie?

And the final slap in the face in the title. Besides the fact that the font in the middle of the words makes it look even MORE like a fan-film, it’s also missing something.

Episode $$$

There’s no number. I know that J.J did the same thing on Star Trek, but numbering those films was never as important since they only usually had tangental connections at best. Star Wars however is an ongoing story told in segments. Going back to its inception the whole idea came about because of movie serials which were told in one continuous stream, each chapter concerning different events but wrapped up in the universe of the whole.

Taking away the number seems like the last definitive proof that this Star Wars has detached from the previous films.

That won’t stop it from leeching off the fan base, echoing ideas (because it has no new ones) and banking on nostalgia instead of anything original. But it won’t play into the rich lore because who has time for that? It will trot out the aging actors so the fans can squee and then let them drift off screen. It will rely on computers over all the practical effects they promised. Notice how there wasn’t any real hints at plot? Because that’s probably been sidelined to make way for more pandering and CG filler.

It just seems again and again to take the easy way out, and then it has the gall to expect me to be impressed?

I’m sorry. I was excited, but this anti-teaser made me bored. It’s just another cash-in.

If the trailer proves me wrong then I’ll happily declare myself a fool and pessimist.

For now…I miss the Christmas Special.

At least it had new ideas and didn’t use CGI as a crutch.