Currently trending at #1 on YouTube, the highly anticipated first Trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens on Daisy Ridley as Rey, on a remote island where she met an aged, disheveled Luke Skywalker at the end of the last instalment. The first part of the trailer focuses on Ridley getting a training bootcamp from Mark Hamill in a reprisal of his iconic role with little dialogue interrupting John Williams‘ glorious music. The rest of the trailer offers little more than a sample of the spectacle you’d expect from the franchise done with ever more impressive technique and scale. That is, except to provide a brief glimpse of the key players from The Force Awakens – Oscar Isaac running in tow with BB-8, John Boyega and surprisingly Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, who was thought to have been killed in the previous film. There is also a veiled glimpse Carrie Fisher in her final performance as Princess Leia before her untimely death late last year.
Domhnall Gleeson is returning, and joining the cast are Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro and a stormtrooper rumoured to be played by Tom Hardy. This marks the first Star Wars film for director Rian Johnson, whose most well-known film on his three-feature belt is 2012’s futuristic action Looper, starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It may be Johnson’s first venture into the famous intergalactic world, but a return of most of the crew from previous films ensures a seamless transition in design et al, because after all, staying true to the nostalgia of the long living franchise while subtly updating it to the digital era is what pushed The Force Awakens to surpass box-office records.
The trailer ends with a hooded Luke Skywalker announcing in silhouette from a cave “It’s time for the Jedi to end”. I’m not familiar enough with the franchise to know exactly what they means, but we will have to wait until December to find out, two years after the release of the first of the modern reboots. You can watch the trailer below.
Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Last Jedi
