Breathe. Just breathe. — The first trailer for the next chapter in the Skywalker Saga is here, and it is a pretty amazing teaser trailer that, thankfully, doesn’t reveal too much about the plot while still feeding us plenty of exciting moments, shots, character returns, and general character arc hints. Let’s have a look at what’s been shown to us here.
But first, let’s just make sure to specify all of the dialogue that’s in the trailer.
LUKE SKYWALKER: Breathe. Just breathe. Now, reach out. What do you see?
REY: Light.
(Faint echo of Princess Leia saying: “Help me, Obi-Wan.”)
REY: Darkness.
(Faint echo of Obi-Wan Kenobi saying: “Seduced by the Dark Side.”)
REY: A balance.
(Faint echo of Yoda saying: “Surrounds us… And binds us.”)
LUKE SKYWALKER: It’s so much bigger.
LUKE SKYWALKER: I only know one truth. It’s time for the Jedi to end.
With that out of the way, let’s finally have a look at the visuals.
This shot and how she acts just reminded me of Dagobah’s ‘Cave of Evil.’ It definitely feels like Rey is overwhelmed with something. Perhaps she got a vision similar to Luke’s on Dagobah in Episode V, or maybe she wasn’t able to handle seeing a Force Ghost for the first time.
This movie is going to focus a lot on Rey learning from Luke, and we all expect to see her going through the same kind of training that Yoda put Luke through. It seems like Rey is testing out her Force powers, but this shot also reminded me of the first time Kal-El flies in Man of Steel.
Here we see General Leia standing in front of some kind of star map.
It looks like this is Kylo Ren’s helmet, or, really, a completely destroyed Kylo Ren helmet. I’m not sure he’s actually going to be wearing a mask or helmet in this film. Now, with his scar, he does look like more of a traditional Star Wars villain, even without the helmet.
A symbol of the Jedi Order on a very old book. Maybe this belonged to Yoda, or maybe this is one of the old books from the original Jedi Temple. The Journal of the Whills, perhaps?
So, here we see Rey training with what appears to be the classic blue Skywalker lightsaber. It also looks like Luke is overseeing her training.
Not soon enough. Not. Soon. Enough.
Rian Johnson revealed to Entertainment Weekly that this planet is called ‘Crait.’ These very odd Resistance fighter ships can be seen – in another shot from the trailers – flying towards what definitely looks like a group of First Order walkers.
This is pretty much all we got with Finn in the trailer, but in some of the behind the scenes pictures shown during the panel for The Last Jedi he was seen sporting Poe’s jacket.
What is it with Poe Dameron and losing his signature black X-Wing in explosions? Poe was probably my favorite new hero in The Force Awakens, and I can’t wait to see more of him in The Last Jedi.
Adam Driver was flat-out fantastic as the new face of the Dark Side. He may not be a Sith (yet, at the very least), but he’s everything I want in a villain. Confident but fragile, and capable of exacting great destruction.
With Rey’s so-called Force-Back visions in The Force Awakens, we got to see Luke reach out to R2-D2. It looks like this is from that same event. Perhaps we will finally get to see the destruction of the Jedi Temple. Perhaps we will finally see how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren and ruined what Luke had built.
Captain Phasma is back, ladies and gentlemen! I’m not quite sure if this is a Resistance base or not. The way the trailer is edited, makes you believe it’s connected to the previous shot. But I don’t think that’s the case, as that wouldn’t make much sense.
I wanted to add this shot because there is a lot of space warfare in this trailer. This exact shot gives us a glimpse of the world they’re fighting above. I’m not quite sure what planet it is, though.
As Luke tells us that it is time for the Jedi to end, it is hard not to be scared for Luke. But maybe it isn’t so hard to really understand why Luke would be disillusioned with the Jedi Order and, indeed, the ways of the Jedi.
His masters had an interesting but odd relationship with telling the truth, everything was from a ‘certain point of view.’ His father, obviously, had a strained relationship with the classic Jedi Masters. But while the old Jedi Order failed his father – Anakin Skywalker – Luke’s new Jedi Order failed his most important pupil – or Padawan – Ben Solo, who seemingly had a hand in the destruction of Luke’s new Order and killed Luke’s best friend.
This trailer – and the teaser poster as well – is very focused on balance between the dark and the light. A perhaps impressionable Rey is thrown towards this light side hero who has become not just disillusioned with the philosophy that birthed his legend, but someone who also felt the need to go into hiding. Perhaps Luke has become a gray Jedi.
It definitely feels like they’re trying to hammer home that this is going to be the Empire Strikes Back of the new sequel trilogy. The trailer has got this very ominous feeling about it. It is a very exciting trailer, but it also has me worried about our characters. Luke Skywalker will always be my guy, so I’m obviously a bit worried about the state he is seemingly in. I can’t wait for this movie!
What did you think of the trailer? Sound off in the comments.
– Jeffrey Rex
I'm Jeffrey Rex 