Well, that was a day, wasn’t it? I love you all, and thus I have tread through all the erection jokes and true fan bullshit and hashtag spammers (we trended!) to give you the best tweets about yesterday’s The Force Awakens teaser trailer. Big congrats also go to @starwars, who made it past the 1 million follower mark today!
It’s live! It’s also now up on the official Youtube, as seen above.
Want to dig deeper? I recommend the shot-for-shot posts from io9, Making Star Wars and /Film. They all discuss some of the rumors we’ve heard, and how they apply to what’s been revealed today. And there’s some immediate reaction over at Eleven-ThirtyEight and Tosche Station.
The biggest – or at least most questioned mystery of the the teaser – who’s that in the voiceover? Popular theories thrown out today include Andy Serkis, Max von Sydow, and the rumor that refuses to die: Benedict Cumberbatch. According Drew McWeeney at Hitfix, it is indeed Serkis, who is “playing a pivotal role in the film, although he will not have a lot of screen time.”
Tomorrow brings us the first teaser trailer for Episode VII. It’s exciting, yes! Let’s review.
What: Our first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens, aka Episode VII. It will be 88 seconds long and give us our first glimpse at the galaxy after Return of the Jedi.
When: Friday, yes, but what time will it be online? Midnight, maybe – I’ll be staying up just in case. But if I was a betting woman, I’d say around 10 a.m. EST/7 a.m. PST – about the same time the first showings begin Friday morning. In fact, the President of Disney France apparently tweeted earlier that it would be out at 4:15 p.m. there, which lines up with 10:15/7:15 a.m. here in the states.
No, you haven’t seen it online already. I promise. There are at least three fanmade versions floating around, repurposed as impostors. (The one that looks like it was filmed in a theater is the fakest one of all – pretty much all the action scenes are from video games.) The othertwo are admitted fan efforts, not intended to fool innocent fans. The real thing has not leaked. (Amazingly.)
→ UPDATE: Nope. It’ll be on iTunes Friday, which is at least online. Jedi News is saying that we can expect “an official modified version” of The Force Awakens trailer that’ll be in theaters beginning Friday will be online Monday, December 1st. Whoo. Bootlegs ahoy.
→ No, really? The Force Awakens will need Millennials, Variety reports.
→ /Film today says that plans are already in the works for a post-Rebels series set during the sequel era and starring all-new characters. Not a tough call, though I am rather suprised that they’d skip right over the thirty years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, which is what I called for the next cartoon right after we learned about Rebels. (Not to mention that Reclamation thing that popped up back in 2013.) Still, we don’t know what the new movies will bring – or maybe they’ll leave the gap era to books and comics, for old time’s sake? Something to chew on, in any case.
→ Making Star Wars describes how we meet Daisy Ridley’s character, and what she’s wearing.
Part of the weekend reports that The Force Awakens trailer would show up at select theaters have turned out to be true… And J.J. Abrams has confirmed that ‘select theaters’ will be involved, and that the teaser will be 88 seconds.
The news broke this morning when Regal jumped the gun, announcing it’ll be at 9 of their theaters. Later, AMC and Cinemark said they’ll have it, too, and the full announcement had a few other chains as well.
The wording on StarWars.com is vague enough that they could they still surprise us with a TV or online debut… And I hope they do, because otherwise this is less ‘special’ than it is cruel.
Carrie Fisher talks The Force Awakens. In Hong Kong, the actress talks a bit about the new film and being an icon. “I always thought that was the worst, oldest word you could ever … It’s something I heard as we were going along: ‘the legacy characters’. That word is very weird to me. It means you have grey hair.”