At this years Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, fans were treated to a first look at the second teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Though director JJ Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy didn’t give away too much about the story, there are a lot of hints and clues in this new teaser. We’ve taken a shot-by-shot look at the new teaser to see what might be in store in the upcoming Star Wars movie. But beware – some of this speculation could be considered spoiler territory.
As the shot pans to the right, we see the distant wreckage of a Star Destroyer. It looks like there was a battle above Jakku at some point prior to the events of the film, and based on the deterioration of the ships, it was probably a long time ago.
The teaser fades to black, and we hear someone that sounds an awful lot like Mark Hamill delivering Luke Skywalker’s line from Return of the Jedi about how the Force is strong in his family. As we hear the line “my father has it,” we fade in on the melted helmet of Darth Vader. Fans will obviously remember Vader’s funeral pyre from the end of Return of the Jedi, and it looks like someone found Vader’s remains.
The next shot reveals R2-D2 next to something burning, but it’s unclear as to what’s actually on fire, and the rocky environment doesn’t give many clues as to where they are. The more important part of this show is the kneeling figure that reaches out to R2 with a mechanical right hand. We all remember that Luke lost his right hand in Cloud City, right? That mechanical hand and the narration saying “I have it” over this likely means that this is Luke Skywalker (or we are meant to think so, as Obi-Wan would say). Yes, this hand looks different than Luke’s replacement hand, but maybe robot hands don’t last forever.
As Luke says “My sister has it,” we see a lightsaber passing from one hand to another. The giving hand seems somewhat juvenile or possibly alien, but it’s really hard to be sure because the being on the left is out of frame before the fade is finished. The receiver is likely female, partially because of what’s implied in the narration at the moment. Is it Leia? We don’t think so, because this hand looks a bit younger than Leia’s would presumably look. We think Rey may be the one getting the lightsaber here. The really important part of this shot is that the lightsaber seems to be Anakin Skywalker’s original blue lightsaber, the one that was eventually given to Luke. (It might be worth mentioning that two of this lightsaber’s previous wielders have lost their right hands, so be careful with that thing!)
As Luke says “You have that power too” we see a title card that says THIS CHRISTMAS. There have been a couple of rumors about this film sneaking into the summer, but this card shows that we should still plan on a December release.
We see a shot of X-wings flying love over a body of water. We suspect it’s a river, partially because George Lucas used shots from 1955’s The Dam Busters to make animatics for the Trench Run sequence in Star Wars. That film saw planes flying low, past fortifications on a river to get to a target, and we’re betting that will have influenced Abrams. We saw a similar scene in the first teaser, and again these X-Wings seem to have slightly sleeker design than the fighters in the original trilogy. As many fans have pointed out, they look a bit like one of Ralph McQuarrie’s early designs.
Oscar Isaac is playing a character named Poe Dameron, and as we can see here, he’s an X-wing pilot. Not a lot to glean here, except that Dameron yelling with excitement. That’s more excitement than we ever saw out of Wedge Antilles, at least.
We get an action shot of Kylo Ren swinging a red lightsaber that’s configured a bit like a claymore. This shot moves really fast, but it looks like there are Stormtroopers behind Ren in this shot, and possibly something on fire.
We see Rey, Finn (John Boyega) and BB-8 running from an explosion. It looks like they’re running from that TIE Fighter off to the left, and it’s likely this shot takes place after the scene in the first teaser with Finn still wearing his Stormtrooper armor.
Another shot of Kylo Ren, similar to the earlier one. We can see a bit more detail of Stormtroopers behind him, and something that looks a little bit like the moisture vaporators we would always see on Tatooine. That doesn’t necessarily mean this shot happens on Tatooine, though; if Jakku is a desert world, it seems likely there might also be a vaporator-based moisture farming industry. Kylo Ren holds out a hand like a Force user, so that would indicate some level of Force training. (Remember, lightsabers aren’t the sole domain of force users; General Grievous wielded lightsabers but not the Force). The staging of this shot also implies that Kylo Ren has some level of authority over Stormtroopers.
This shot looks like an homage to Triumph of the Will, and there are some interesting clues here. The red and black flag recalls the colors we’d see with Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial Guards. Off to the left, you can see some TIE fighters, but with a new color scheme. The TIEs in the original trilogy had black panels on mostly grey frames, but these have white panels on black frames, so that’s probably a good indicator that these are slightly newer (or at least different) fighters. The snowy hills in the background of these scene make us think of the shot from the first teaser where Kylo Ren activates his lightsaber in a snowy forest. Is this the same world?
One of these darker TIEs flying through smoke in a blue. The shape of the TIE looks very similar to the TIEs from the original trilogy, but the colors have changed. These look to be the TIEs involved in the dogfight with the Millennium Falcon that we saw in the first teaser trailer.
Here we see a TIE wreaking havoc in a hangar bay, and there’s a lot to see in this shot. Based on the architecture, the parked TIEs and the scrambling Stormtroopers, this looks like we’re in an Imperial Star Destroyer, or something similar. We’re guessing maybe someone stole the TIE that’s shooting up the hangar bay. That particular TIE looks a different than the ones we’ve seen before; either that’s a different model, or it’s the previously unseen tail section, in which case that TIE seems to be able to shoot backwards.
Here’s one of the first close ups of Finn in this teaser. Our suspicion is that this shot happens after the Stormtrooper group shot early in the first teaser, but before that shot of Finn looking around at the sand dunes. Piecing together both teasers, we think a squad of Stormtroopers is heading to Jakku, and most of them get wiped out as they disembark, but somehow Finn survives. He takes off his helmet in shock, and at some point ditches all of his armor for civilian attire (and he later meets up with Rey).
A group of ships heads towards something that looks like an updated Star Destroyer. The middle ship has wings that may be folding up similar to other shuttles we’ve seen in both trilogies and the animated series. The other escort ships aren’t all that clear, but their engine configurations look a little bit like the engines on the Nu-class Attack Shuttle used by the Republic in the Clone Wars.
This is the first appearance of what some fans are calling a Chrome Stormtrooper. There have been some costume designs of this armor leaked on the web, but it’s the new promotional images that really seem to indicate that this armor is important, either for one character in particular or some command-level type of Stormtrooper. Also note that the light pattern behind this trooper is the same type of lighting we saw on both Death Stars.
The droid BB-8 is peering around the corner in a hallway that looks an awful lot like the Millennium Falcon. Since we know the Falcon is in The Force Awakens, it’s safe to assume BB-8 ends up onboard at some point.
We see Rey reach out to Finn to help him up, but he seems suspicious. Is theirs an uneasy partnership?
We see the Falcon fleeing from TIEs, and get another view of the new rectangular transceiver on the port side of the ship (which clearly had to be replaced after Lando borrowed the ship in Return of the Jedi). There’s more starship wreckage here, too, so this scene probably takes place on Jakku.
The Falcon flies into the gaping engine bell of a gargantuan starship. The staggered bank of engines looks a lot like the engine layouts of the Super Star Destroyer we saw in Empire Strikes Back, and size would match. You don’t see a control tower, but maybe this enormous vessel crashed upside down.
This is a TIE pilot in an updated flight suit. The new suit has one hose, instead of two, and the mask looks similar to the updated Stormtrooper helmet, with red stripes. The green in this shot is a reflection of the blaster fire outside the ship.
This last shot might be the most exciting image in the whole teaser; our first look at Han Solo & Chewbacca onboard the Falcon, with Han saying “Chewie, we’re home.” This last shot leads to so many questions; Where have they been? Where has the Falcon been? Why are their weapons drawn on their own ship?
Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be in theaters this December.
