Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer Review

I’m a little late to the part, but the new Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer dropped yesterday. There was a lot of wariness surrounding the Star Wars IP when Disney took over the franchise, but I’ve been nothing but tinkled pink with the last two Star Wars movies.

Sure, The Force Awakens was a bit too homagey for my tastes, but on the whole I found the movie indescribably entertaining.

Which is to say nothing of Rogue One (a movie I saw 4 times in theaters, which is some sort of sad, personal record).

With all that said, I am going into Star Wars: The Last Jedi with pretty high expectations.

So how’s the newest trailer do in keeping the pump primed?

Check it out for yourself, and then keep scrolling to catch some of my thoughts.

Color Palette

First things first, the color palette selected for The Last Jedi is amazing. The movie poster is drenched in a deep, bloody crimson which does an excellent job of setting tone and expectation going into this upcoming release.

By contrast, the poster for The Force Awakens paints an entirely different picture. The scene is split down the middle by a vibrant blue and a distinctive red battling for primacy. This not-so-subtle clue set the expectation in The Force Awakens that the fight between the light and dark side of the force have found even footing.

Conflict wages, but balance has been somewhat maintained.

Compare that with the bloody red and black poster we’re given in The Last Jedi and we’re given the distinct impression that the dark side will be winning out in this next chapter of the story.

Which makes sense if you think about story structure and narrative arc as a whole.

The second installment of any trilogy must escalate conflict and push our good-guys further into the corner. This is effectively the second act climax and it must be big enough to sustain the viewership through the sagging middle and deliver us to a suitably climactic finale.

Aesthetic

The Last Jedi has adopted a much different aesthetic from The Force Awakens which sported bright colors, crisp details, and a somewhat warm universe. The Last Jedi, by comparison, feels dirty. Grubby even.

The world, and the characters (on both sides of the conflict) therewithin, look tired, beaten, and nearly broken.

Luke’s Role

The fan favorite moment of The Force Awakens was at the very end of the film when Rey finds Luke. It is here we feel that perhaps there is hope after-all. This, our hero of heroes, will guide Rey on her journey to become a badass and all will be put right in the universe once again.

Well, if this trailer shows us anything, it’s that this is probably not going to happen.

Luke appears continually wary of Rey, though he does seem to have taken her under his wing for a good old fashioned training montage.

The pivotal moment of this trailer is the moment when Luke says (presumably to Rey after she displays some pretty dope Force powers in the form of cracking rock),

“I’ve seen this raw strength only once before. It didn’t scare me enough then. It does now.”

The scene then immediately cuts to Luke’s robot hand erupting from the burned out debris of his old Jedi-school, which leads us to believe that Luke is not in fact referencing his battle with Darth Vader, but his battle with Kylo Ren.

Which is a theory that makes a lot of sense considering the beginning of the trailer has Snoke (again presumably) speaking to Kylo Ren about his raw, unbridled power.

If all this is true, then it would indicate that both Rey and Kylo Ren are on a different power level from even Darth Vader himself.

Pretty sobering stuff, but it points to an interesting fan theory which is that Kylo Ren and Rey are brother/sister. Perhaps even fraternal twins in the same way Luke and Leia were.

Rey and Ren BFF’s

The overarching theme of this trailer is that neither Rey or Ren are entirely satisfied with the quality of guidance they are receiving from their mentors.

This leads to the trailer’s final moment where Rey says,

“I need somebody to show me my place in all this.”

We assume she is speaking to Luke, but the final cut is to Kylo Ren extending his hand.

Does this mean these two young, super-powerful rascals will team up to forge their own path not guided by either the light or dark side, but some synergy of the two?

Perhaps.

Only time will tell.

All I know for certain is December can’t come quick enough.

[box] What’d you think of The Last Jedi trailer? Get down to the comments and throw some fan theories at my face.[/box]