“Star Wars” trailer releases with huge fanfare

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The battle-scarred landscape of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (and two of its vintage characters) got a good long reveal Thursday as director J.J. Abrams released the first new footage for the film set to release in December of this year since last November. The second teaser trailer begins with a simple image, Daisy Ridley’s scavenger Rey, racing across the desert on her speeder toward the wreckage of an X-Wing fighter.

Then, the audience hears a young voice. It is Luke’s speech to Leia from Return of the Jedi in which he reveals that Darth Vader is his father and that he must face him, possibly to never return.

“The force is strong in my family,” says Mark Hamill’s voice from three decades ago.

“My father has it. I have it. My sister has it.”

Here’s where there’s a new addition to the dialogue.

“And you have the power, too,” Hamill adds.

Perhaps the most iconic image in the new trailer is the scorched visage of Darth Vader’s helmet, last seen in a funeral pyre as Luke Skywalker mourned the last-minute redemption of his genocidal Sith father.

Like the previous teaser, this one spends most of its time introducing us to new characters.

The Millennium Falcon also takes flight, but it’s the kicker at the very end that had fans roaring at Star Wars Celebration, the fan convention where director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy debuted the trailer.

The new trailer, along with any news relating to the state of the film has been looked upon by perhaps the most loyal fanbase of any movie or movie series in the history of entertainment.

So, the pass of the torch to director Abrams is a terrifying concept for many because, the collection of the seven ‘old’ films is widely looked upon as a pantheon of movie greatness. For many, the two trailers which have been released, albeit brief, have many lifetime fans believing it is heading in the right direction.