5 Things Missing From The Star Wars: The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer
We loved the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer, and have already over analyzed and talked about it at length elsewhere on the site. But as I thought more about the trailer, I realized that the teaser was missing a few key elements that most people would have expected. Note: these are not complaints, only observations. What is Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer missing? Find out after the jump.
LucasFilm / Disney Company Logos
Most movie trailers begin with a quick flash of the movie studio and production company logos. The twinkling Lucasfilm logo has become a staple of Star Wars trailers, almost as much as the 20th Century Fox fanfare was on the first six films. (Oh boy, we're going to miss that too.) But the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer didn't feature the Lucasfilm logo, or even Disney's majestic castle or Bad Robot's "running robot logo" screens. It instead begins in total blackness, adding to the teaser's mystery.
Outer Space
With a movie named Star Wars, you would expect to see stars and the blackness of outer space. But The Force Awakens teaser trailer was entirely set on within the atmosphere of a handful of planets. Yes, we saw X-Wing fights in attack formation, but gliding close to a large body of water. Yes, we did see the Millennium Falcon take flight, but instead of blasting off the planet to space it appears to be in a inner atmosphere dogfight with Tie Fighters. Is this a bad thing? No. But I think its worth noting especially since director JJ Abrams' Star Trek films have gotten a lot of Trekkie fan criticism because the stories haven't featured much in the way of space travel. I don't expect this to be the case with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but still — its funny that the teaser trailer doesn't show a second of outer space.
Original Trilogy Characters And Cast Members
The film features absolutely no characters from the original six films. Not only do the human leads of the former trilogy not appear –Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), but the masked and costumed characters as well – Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) or even Warwick Davis. We may recognize familiar yet-updated ships, outfits, armor, and weapons but none of the characters we have come to love appear in this 88-second trailer.
Apparently the classic trilogy characters will only make brief appearances in the marketing of the film — where they are and how they fit into the grand placement of the story is being protected. We've learned that the marketing for Star Wars: The Force Awakens will almost entirely focus on the new leads, which include Daisy Ridley and John Boyega front and center — how cool is it that the teaser trailer to the biggest movie of all time is being marketed with female and black leads? This is great progress.
Plot and Character Reveals
The Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer feels more like an old school teaser trailer than the ones we've become use to in modern times. For instance, the Jurassic World teaser trailer last week told us a lot about the film's plot, probably too much, and revealed details about many of the characters. Fans even put together their own more-teasery edits of the trailer which have been better received by the fan community.
On the other hand, The Force Awakens teaser trailer reveals a lot less. We don't know the plot of the film, not from this teaser anyway. We see the Galactic Empire still exists, by evidence of a squad of stormtroopers, and we also see that Rebels are still fighting a battle against them. We see there is a new Sith threat and a Stormtrooper is running scared out in the middle of nowhere on a desert planet. While get glimpses of Oscar Issac and Daisy Ridley's characters, but we don't learn much about them. Lupita Nyongo, and/or Adam Driver don't appear in the teaser at all – as much as it is likely one of them is under the Sith robe in the forrest sequence.
My greater point is that the teaser gives us a taste without explaining anything. Its like a song without words in a world full of music videos. And yes, we love this. We wish more teaser trailers would hold back and do what JJ Abrams and Disney have done with this early teaser trailer.
No Episode Number On The Logo
Sure, when Disney revealed the Star Wars: The Force Awakens logo we had a feeling they would be removing the Episode subtitle from the marketing materials. It seems like this is part of a bigger Hollywood movement to get away from numbered sequels. Marketing research has apparently shown that people are more willing to see a sequel without a number in the title, probably enticing moviegoers who had not seen the previous installments.
The Episode titles were not on the original trilogy films, but George Lucas included them with almost all of the marketing of the prequel trilogy movies. But for some reason the Episode number subtitle felt like it was missing. It might also have to do something with the effect of having "The Force Awakens" subtitle appear in-between the primary words of Star Wars logo, which felt like a cheaply-produced fan title animation created in After Effects. While the Episode number doesn't annoy me like most fans, I do hope they change the presentation of the logo as we get closer to release.
Remember, the title treatment for JJ Abrams Star Trek changed greatly from the first trailers to the final film: I actually really dig Michael Cohen's take on the Force Awakens logo:
