Everyone and their mother have been posting frame by frame breakdowns of the new trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The movie doesn’t come out until December, and some or all of these scenes could potentially be cut from the final product. But it is Star Wars, and people love that stuff. Therefore, I have decided to do my own little review of the trailer.
I shall preface this analysis by noting that I have yet to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Therefore, I probably do not know a lot of these characters. But let’s give it a go anyway.
First, the trailer itself.
So let’s dig through this thing scene by scene. That seems to be the cool thing to do these days. *Spoiler Alerts?*
We start with someone who sounds like Luke Skywalker saying “Breathe,” while a young woman does just that. Several columns have speculated that this is a call back to Yoda training young Luke in the ways of the force. Therefore, that means Luke is training this young woman. Since I do not know her name, as I will repeat that I did not see The Force Awakens, let’s call her Geraldine. Personally, I don’t know that this is Luke training Geraldine. Maybe she is pregnant and Luke is her birth coach. All we can say is that Geraldine is breathing here, so we can assume she is alive.
Next we see an image of Skull Island. Apparently, King Kong is a strong user of force (or maybe The Force), so Loki is going to go look for him. Is Geraldine on that island with the Skullcrawlers? If so, she better be careful. Those things are nasty.
Here we see Geraldine looking out at the ocean, wondering when Loki and Samuel L. Jackson are going to come to the island? She is obviously still breathing (see the first frame), and she wants to share such a beautiful site with someone other than a giant ape. I mean, sure, Kong is cool and all, and he is royalty, but Geraldine misses normal Asgardians and profanity-spewing actors.
Now we see someone’s hand. Is it Geraldine’s? Probably. It looks like she has used Palmolive recently. There are also tiny pebbles floating around. Again, I have seen many people say that this is “obviously” a callback to Luke’s own training with Yoda. Listen, Luke lifted up a box, a few rocks, etc. Yoda, the eternally awesome little green dude, lifted an entire spaceship out of the swamp. These are little pebbles. They could be bouncing in the air due to one of the dinosaurs walking around Skull Island. Didn’t you ever see Jurassic Park scene with the ripples in the water glass? Yea, same thing. It could be possible. But I will say that these rocks are not being lifted by Geraldine using the force, but are actually some sort of black space marshmallows which are floating due to the odd gravitational forces on Skull Island.
Is that Darth Vader? No. Is that Geraldine again? No. That is actually Leia looking over what appears to be a three-dimensional map. Perhaps they are battle plans. Perhaps she is looking to upgrade her rebel living quarters. Maybe she is using some space version of MapQuest so she can get to her friend’s party. Most likely, it is Leia organizing a playlist for her estranged brother in the hope that Geraldine has found him in the middle of the ocean.
This looks like a broken helmet of some sort. How did it break? Who broke it? Maybe it is the helmet of that emo villain from The Force Awakens. What was his name? I don’t know, I didn’t see the movie. I shall call him Mortimer. So did Mortimer break his own helmet? Or did someone else break his helmet? Or is Mortimer’s helmet actually a Transformer. Does that mean Mortimer is from Cybertron? Okay, the judges have ruled and have decided that this image is Mortimer’s helmet in the midst of its transforming preparing to do battle with Optimus Prime so that he doesn’t turn evil and kill Bumblebee like has been rumored.
This appears to be a shelf of books on a tree. Without a doubt, this is the image of a crime scene carefully staged by a sadistic person who harbors deep feelings of Dendrophobia. But who did it? Was it Mortimer? Does Mortimer hate trees? Does Mortimer know how to read?
Someone touches a phallic symbol. This is supposed to be a family-friendly movie! What the heck? But who is touching it? It is obviously someone not “in touch” with the force, because they wouldn’t have to touch it. *rimshot please*
This scene appears to be Geraldine practicing with a lightsaber. The lightsaber is blue, so we are supposed to assume it is Luke’s old lightsaber. Personally, to me, this looks like stock footage from some travel agency trying to book a highly expensive and unnecessary vacation. Honestly, who would want to vacation on Skull Island? That doesn’t sound very appealing. I have seen other internet people claim that the person watching Geraldine practice is Luke Skywalker, again pushing the Luke-is-now-Yoda-training-Geraldine theory. Really, internet trolls? Isn’t it more likely that elderly Luke, living all alone on Skull Island, is just a pervy old guy staring at a cute Geraldine during her daily yoga?
Here we see the vicious attack of some sort of space vehicle on a poor defenseless planet surface. These vehicles are ripping the skin right from the planet surface, causing this planet to bleed human blood. While it works as an analogy for how we humans are butchering our own planet, thus killing Mother Earth, it is still a pretty violent image. Couldn’t these space cars just puncture a hole in the atmosphere to allow the planet to be bombarded by space radiation and slowly kill it?
Here’s another shot at this brutality. Seriously, Disney, you own this franchise now. Are you trying to make an X-rated space opera? First you support beastiality in your Beauty and the Beast live action film, now you are bastardizing the Star Wars universe by making this movie about some heartless destroyer of nature. Why, Disney, why?
Just a reminder that the makers of this movie are not completely alt-right Nazis who voted for Trump. Look – they have an actual black guy in the movie! Of course, it looks like he is in a coma. Probably suffered a beatdown from the grand wizard of space bigotry. But at least Hollywood didn’t whitewash him and hire Ryan Phillipe to play the role.
This scene appears to be the cut soccer scene from Star Trek Beyond. It looks like Scotty, or is that Malcolm Reynolds, chasing after that robotic soccer ball? I don’t tell, but let’s name him TacoSalad. What? I’m hungry. The soccer ball we shall name Letter-Letter-Number. This appears to be a pretty intense match.
Before TacoSalad can score the winning goal by kicking Letter-Letter-Number towards the spaceship, something blows up! Was it the spaceship, because they is some awesome defensive strategy there. Your opponent will be forced to remain at nil if they have no goal upon the pitch into which they may score. Okay, I spent waaay too long on this scene for a stupid soccer joke.
YAY, it is the Millennium Falcon swooping in to save the day! Thank goodness we are going to get some Han Solo in this movie. I wonder whatever happened to him and Leia. They made a cute couple. What? No thank you, I have no interest in spoilers from The Force Awakens. I am sure this trailer can stand completely on its own without any knowledge of that other film. Good movies don’t need to reference their predecessors to make sense. Internal logic, people. Anyway, it’s good to see Han Solo beating up bad space dudes again.
Geraldine looks mad. And she is shining in blue lighting. Is it from a lightsaber? Or is it from a lava lamp that Kong gave her for her birthday? Unfortunately we may never know. However, we can dissect this image to tell that she is obviously upset because Chipotle was out of guacamole. Really now, Chipotle? You are a Mexican burrito joint, how do you run out of guac? Go buy some more avocados from the store and get smashing!
As a juxtaposition, we see Mortimer staring at something while holding a stick of fire. Mortimer is all red light. And both Mortimer and Geraldine are white. America, fuck yeah! Anyway, Mortimer must have gotten the last of the guacamole at Chipotle because he doesn’t look as mad as Geraldine does. Or maybe Mortimer is working his summer job at Chipotle and is the one responsible for informing the customers there is no more guacamole. He does have the dead eyes of a moody teen being forced to work a job which requires customer service.
Here we see some building burning in the distance while R2-D2 and an accomplice looks on. Again, WTF Disney? R2-D2 was liked by absolutely everyone! Why did you turn him into an arsonist? That goes against the loveable droid’s personality. Robots want to take over the universe, not burn it down. And who is the hooded figure next to him? The figure looks too hunched over to be his long-time friend C-3PO. Wait. 3PO! No! Did R2-D2 murder you and then set fire to your summer home like a grisly episode of Snapped?
For some reason we cut to a bit of a music video from 1988. Is that Skid Row? Dokken? Vinnie Vincent’s Invasion? Whatever video this is from, the music licensing didn’t make it through legal as we still hear John Williams orchestral glory behind the images. Unfortunately, we switch away before we see if the stormtroopers can dance with precision chorography.
Don’t forget, this movie is called Star Wars, so let’s make sure we throw in a short clip of some space ships fighting, like during a war, in space.
The very last thing we see is the scene everyone is talking about. We see the silhouette of someone we assume is Luke Skywalker standing at a very vaginal-looking exit of a cave. Is Luke being symbolically born from the ravaged earth of Skull Island? Then, we hear him speak, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” And the fandom blew up the Twittersphere! What could he mean? The Jedi can’t end. Or, to quote Luke’s father, “Noooooooooooooooo!” However, it seems obvious to me that Luke’s quote has been misinterpreted. He actually said, “It’s time for the Jedi to end …” That ellipsis makes all the difference. What was he going to say? It’s time for the Jedi to end eating foods with gluten? It’s time for the Jedi to end watching Game of Thrones? It’s time for the Jedi to end world hunger? It’s time for the Jedi to end the illegal dumping of radioactive pod racers into the Gungan ocean? It’s time for the Jedi to end the embargo on Kylie Minogue albums? What? What were you trying to say, Luke? And who were you saying it to? Were you talking to Geraldine? Mortimer? Your volleyball friend Wilson? Who? It is my belief that you were actually returning to the universe to lead the rebels everywhere and you were saying that “It’s time for the Jedi to end the disheartening lack of guacamole at Chipotle!” We’ve got your back, Luke! (I told you I was hungry.)
Overall, this trailer tells me that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be many things. It will be an environmental lecture. It will be a foray into the slasher/gore genre. It will be a feminist outcry against the overt masculinity of sci-fi films. It will be the reason for the names Mortimer and Geraldine to top the baby name list nine months after release. It will be a sports movie (well, sort of, if you think soccer is a sport). It will be a monster movie. It will be a crossover with the Transformer franchise. It will be a patriotic tour de force. It will reek of awesomeness and you will spend your money to see it even if you don’t know why. But maybe I should see The Force Awakens first. After all, I need to know how Han was able to fly the Millennium Falcon into battle!
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this little column. And if I didn’t mock your fandom enough, don’t worry, there are tons of trailers out there for me to dissect. Yes, I am talking about you, you Harry Potter freaks, Doctor Who weirdos, Sherlockians, Red Dwarf obsessives, MST3K lunatics, “The Room” memorizers, soccer hooligans, Trekkies, Supernatural geeks, Walking Dead devourers, Hobbits, and even you, Star Wars basement-dwellers. The Whedonverse fans are cool with me though.
If you liked this column, please comment below. If you hated this column, please comment below. If you want to see more columns from me, please comment below. If you want me to be placed into solitary confinement and only allowed three minutes of bathroom time a day, please comment below. Basically, comment below please! I’m desperate for attention! Not really, but it is always nice to receive feedback.
Until the next trailer rolls out…
