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Holy fuckballs! What an unexpected surprise!



Amazing costumes, creatures and sets! Everything looks great! And some highly intriguing bits of plot are gleaned! 150 days or so left!

by unexpected you mean completely expected, right?

We need a second trailer. I like the BTS stuff, but I wanted to see the finished product.....like who the fsck is Rey fighting 3 on 1?!?!

You're right. I had completely forgot about the goings-on at D23 related to TLJ. Stupid me.

Can't get enough of what looks like the world and characters of the galaxy's upper crust.

This behind-the-scenes look at Ep. VIII was a fantastic treat.

Disney was REALLY generous with this one. I'm VERY grateful for that.

Some observations...

(1.) Rey gets her own DISTINCTIVE lightsaber. This is clearly seen at the 2:31 mark. I'm thrilled to see this. I can't describe exactly why I feel this way - it's a surprisingly strong emotional reaction to me. I think it might largely be due to Anakin's saber being already so closely affiliated with Anakin, Vader and Luke. It's such a core element of those characters, it's hard to imagine anyone else coming into possession of it. Don't know. There's more to *why* my reaction is so strong, I just can't figure it all out right now. Anyone else have a similar response, and perhaps you can state why from your perspective...? I re-watched the first trailer several times, when we see Rey earnestly running at dusk - one can't tell if she's holding Anakin's saber or her own.

(2.) Seeing Chewbacca alone under the Falcon by the fire - instantly made me filled with sorrow. Poignant and says everything with a minimum of information. It's not easy to pull something like that off. THAT's great storytelling and fills me with high hopes for the depths/quality of this film.

(3.) Kylo Ren wears a couple of different outfits. The first one that we see at the 0:46 mark reminds me a lot of what Luke wore in Ep. VI. His bearing's different than what we've seen before. He's not rigid with fury, something he conveyed in every single scene in Ep. VII. Perhaps he's having second thoughts in regards to his ways...? Transitioning to the Light Side of the Force...?

(4.) I like seeing the A-Wings again, however, they were my least favorite of all of the original trilogy's starfighters. I would've loved to have seen at least one old-school X-Wing around. If my memory serves me correctly, as established in The Clone Wars and Rebels TV series, the starcraft are aged as follows (oldest listed first):
Y-Wing
A-Wing
B-Wing
X-Wing

It then seems to me that out of all of those old vehicle types listed, the X-Wing would be more numerous due to being newer, it should thus be more abundant than the other ones. Of course I'm prejudiced and will accept almost any reasoning to see my beloved grandaddy X-Wing streaking about.

:-D


(5.) The axe-like melee weapon the specialized stormtroopers are carrying look pretty sweet. I look forward to seeing them in action. Snoke was clearly terrified of Skywalker. I don't blame him for ensuring that he had a sizeable body of cannon fodder trained to try to (briefly) slow Luke down. lol

(6.) The practical effects creatures are STUNNING. The White Wolf struck me as having to be quite significant as we see a white wolf-creature featured in the trailer for next season's Rebels TV series as well in Filoni's artwork featuring Ahsoka. There's a lot of talk that Ahsoka "stumbled" upon being the first of a new kind of Force adept, one aligned to the middle-ground between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force, the Gray Balance. Filoni has "denied" the hardwired wolf-Ahsoka connection, but it seems to me to be a very strange thing to create a lot of artwork with her and white wolves, and there being "no" connection between the two. It'd be awesome if that wolf strongly bridges the two series together, and helps to establish the Gray Order.

(7.) Rey wears at least two distinct outfits, the one that we saw at the end of Ep. VII and one that is distinctly gray in hue. It makes me hopeful that she's going to be the first generation of Force adepts who are free of the Jedi-taint; a member of a Gray Order. Or perhaps it's a visual cue that she's falling to the Dark Side of the Force.

(8.) Seeing Luke's earthy-brown new outfit stirs the same reaction out of me when I saw Rey's gray aesthetic. Perhaps this is a visual cue that this new band of Force adepts will be far more aligned with Natural Law, as they should be. Due to their well established history of absolute corruption, they should be EXTREMELY skeptical of and scorn governmental/political ties (most of what politicians do deliberately violates/perverts Natural Law), and ensure that they're never again corrupt enough to be dupes for war. Those Jedi were absolute suckers for the Emperor's ways because they were completely arrogant and because they thought (very wrongly) that they were The Good Guys. In reality, they were The Very Tip of the wicked Emperor's bloody spear, and without them Palpatine would never have been able to unleash the level of Tyrannical Terror that he did. The Jedi, the "good" guys, did that. Lucas' telling of the Jedi's corruption is Loud and Clear, although most people tragically miss it. We could learn a lot from it. Lucas' motivations for making the Jedi's corruption so central to the Prequel Trilogy's plot is due to his being dead-set against the Vietnam War and Bush's/Cheney's invasion of Iraq (Lucas is on the record about this multiple times); two countries that didn't so much as even throw a stone that landed on our shores, but absolute carnage was unleashed on them anyway. I dearly hope that this film sets the Force adepts on a path that is far more aligned to Natural Law so that something as perverse as the Jedi is completely avoided.

(9.) So good to see Carrie Fisher again. Put a big lump in my throat, and I actually let out a heavy sigh when she spoke about family. On a multitude of levels, her passing is a huge loss.

Yes, this entire preview had it All. And I'm very grateful for it.

I wouldn't mind if Disney did this another twenty times or so.

;-D

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Alright, after spending WAY too much time looking at photographs and paused videos, I am compelled to ask...

Is that lightsaber at the 2:31 mark Rey's own unique lightsaber, or is it Anakin's?

Anakin's never had a gap just below the tip that allowed the glow of the blue blade to show through, did it?

I can't ever recall seeing in the Prequel or Original grilogies where that "gap" permitted the blue glow of the blade to show through. It's that GLOWING gap that makes me think that Rey built her own saber closely modeled after the one Anakin built.

That said, when Finn uses it in battle against Kylo Ren, he holds it on an angle where the gap is glowing. So - we've seen it glowing if The Force Awakens, but did we ever see that gap glowing in any of the previous films?

Argh!

I'd greatly appreciate a definitive answer should anyone have one (if there are any screenshots/publicity photos from the Prequel/Original trilogies showing the gap glowing, I'd love to have links to them).

Short Rian Johnson interview, plus new BTS vid:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/mov ... 793390001/

Remember above?

And guess what? Mark Hamill few days ago accidentally did let it slip that Luke might go to the Dark Side in a recent tweet.

I told you all so. I can tell where things are going. Better start listening to me, guys.

Somebody's btfo because he can't handle the UGLY truth...

You might be more right than you know. Go here.

I don't care if you're right or wrong. You're just being a dick.

How am I a dick exactly if I've been right about the trajectory of the Sequel Trilogy thus far?

Someone's just MAD because I've been speaking the TRUTH.

Gotta love fan boys like you who blindly follow Star Wars, not knowing when to keep their expectations low.

I don't "blindly follow" anything.

A blatant fan boy lie.

My turn to do this to you:

Watching a movie with an open mind and without a chip on my shoulders is not being a "fan boy."
Besides, I'm not a boy. I'm 52.
And I've had my fill of oddballs like you.

You mean us Democrats? Since you lack broad understanding of the world that extends to Star Wars?