10 Takeaways From The Last Jedi Trailer!

The Star Wars franchise is nothing if not formulaic. I’m pretty sure there’s a guy at Disney with a clipboard that reviews the scripts and ticks off the necessary items. “Lightsaber duel- check. Bad guy says “It’s your destiny” at some point- check. Cute things make whacky noises- check. Spicy undercurrent of incest- check…”

And so on. I thought the Force Awakens was well-made and all that, but it was too much of a retread of A New Hope for me to really enjoy it the way I later enjoyed Rogue One. But what does this have to do with The Last Jedi trailer? Well if we assume the Sequel Trilogy will continue to follow the pattern of the original films, then we can get a good idea of how things are going to go. I just hope Disney have enough self-awareness not to end the film with Rey getting amputated.

It looks like we can look forward to more impressive battle scenes, perhaps on the scale of Hoth or Geonosis. The trailer hints at this with a shot of the First Order launching an assault on Crait with a row of walkers. It looks beautiful and I’m excited, but this is what I meant in my opening paragraph about the Sequel Trilogy mirroring the Original. They are very clearly evoking the Battle of Hoth, which of course is a key feature of the second film in the Original Trilogy. The prospect of such a battle in and of itself excites me, but it also makes me cautious about the narrative as a whole. Hopefully the order of things is different and there are a few surprises in store.
Notice something different about the walkers? This is the equivalent of the Nazis invading Russia again but outfitting all their soldiers with woolly turtleneck sweaters and thermal earmuffs. They’ve learned from their mistakes and reinforced the armor of the new walker models. I don’t see any air speeders giving these behemoths any trouble.
If the echoes of Hoth didn’t already make you suspicious, then perhaps the shots reminiscent of Dagobah will. We already knew that a large part of the movie would be about Rey coming to terms with her destiny, her force powers, and learning to control them. So the parallel to Empire was already there. But the curious shot below made me instantly think of Luke’s test in the Dark Side Cave on Dagobah, and I’m not the only one. Most fans seem to agree that this is somewhere on Ahch-To (that planet named after a Scottish person sneezing apparently); my bet is it’s underneath the island in some kind of cavern system.
But maybe the retreading of the past is intentional, forming some part of a complex meta-narrative? After all, Luke in the trailer looks traumatized by the past, saying “I’ve seen this raw strength only once before,” and I think it’s safe to assume he is talking about Rey. He’s worried about history repeating itself, and Star Wars has always been interested in the cyclical nature of things and returning to the equilibrium of the status quo by “restoring balance to the force”.
The trailer as a whole is deliberately trolling us. We see a very distinct dichotomy between the training of Rey and Ren (who I am seriously tempted to put money on as being related). The trailer hints at both of them struggling with the teachings of Luke and Snoke respectively and has fans questioning whether Rey will fall to the dark side or if Ren will fall to the light. Personally I don’t see that happening, because I’m not yet convinced that the Star Wars franchise wants to be anything other than safe. It would be an awesome way to subvert the formula if they really did switch sides and Ben Solo emerged in Episode 9 as the true hero of the narrative.
One of the things I really did like about the Force Awakens was the characters, and I love the way the trailer for The Last Jedi highlights the next phase of each of their journeys. Yes, the filmmakers are trolling us by making it look like Rey is considering joining the dark side, but what’s really nice here is the impression we get that both Rey and Ren are struggling with their sense of identity and purpose. Their questions and anxieties are largely the same, and there’s definitely a kinship in that which feels fresh and interesting.
This trailer just can’t get enough of teasing us, can it? It’s been cleverly edited in a way to make it seem like certain characters are talking to certain others, and nowhere is this more evident than in the glimpses of the movie’s space battle. We are to assume that Kylo Ren is targeting his mother’s capital ship, and maybe he is. But the shot stops short of revealing whether he pulls the trigger or not. What is interesting to me is how things will end for Leia in this film. A year ago I would have felt certain that they wouldn’t have Kylo Ren kill his mom, as it would lack the necessary shock and impact given that he just murdered his dad in the previous film. But with Carrie Fisher’s tragic passing last December, I don’t see how they can avoid killing her off. She’s just too big a character to be left conspicuously absent in Episode 9. I’d love to hear your theories on this one, so let me know in the comments what you think will happen.
One character we can be a little more sure of is Finn. It looks like his storyline will see him go undercover in the First Order, as he is pictured in one of their uniforms. We then see him fighting Captain Phasma, a scene that Gwendolyn Christie absolutely deserves after her talents were so underused in The Force Awakens. I think it’s important to have deadly villains that aren’t force-users- kind of like Boba Fett. Hopefully they do her justice this time around.
We’ll definitely be seeing more of Snoke. I find it interesting that he’s wearing gold robes and as opposed to the more Gothic fashion sense that’s usually so popular with Sith Lords. It makes him look more ostentatious and maybe a little androgynous too. There’s been a lot of speculation about who and what he is exactly, with some fans suggesting he might not be a Sith in the traditional sense. He might simply be very knowledgeable of the dark side, or a wielder of a similar but different kind of sorcery. We can see in the below shot that he gets a hold of Rey at some point, and we can also see what appear to be Imperial guards in the background, clad in red.
What doesn’t the trailer show us? It’s worth remembering that if something’s not in the trailer, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Clearly the focus of the film is Rey’s journey, so we don’t get much of Finn and Poe. Will their romance be further explored in this movie? It’s been repeatedly suggested by the producers and the actors themselves that Star Wars’ first gay relationship is on its way, but no indication of that is given here. It’s been confirmed that Finn will visit a planet with a casino city modeled after Monte Carlo, but we didn’t see any of that here either. I definitely think Episode 8 will draw upon Empire for inspiration, and given that the First Order took such a thorough whooping last time around, I think this entry will conclude on a much darker and ambiguous note. Overall, I’m excited to see this film when it comes out on December 15^th!