What I predicted about "The Force Awakens" exactly a year ago

The trailer that first gave the world this image.

 Though I have already written quite a lot about last year's Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, recently out on Blu-Ray (and a little bit more about why I should be the next Han Solo), and though I concluded the last thing I wrote about the movie itself by saying that I (likely) wouldn't write any more about the movie...well, permit me one last post. For Facebook's "On This Day" feature--which I both find fascinating as an obsessive retrospectator, and trivial as a general hater of Facebook--resurrected what I had to say about this trailer that came out exactly a year ago today:


It's pretty weird to watch that trailer after you've already seen the movie (and weird for me to think about the fact that I didn't know where I would be typing these words when the trailer came out last April). Some of its scenes don't even appear in the final product, but all of its teases and hints are now fully revealed. But that's not why I am interested in revisiting it. As an obsessive retrospectator, I am always interested in seeing whether I was right about things like this. So here's what I had to say about the trailer when it first came out, identified as "Past Jack" (you can find what I am quoting from here), followed by my analyses by my current self, identified as "Present Jack":

1) Past Jack: The idea of ships falling out of the sky and being ruins on planets is awesome, and visually fascinating. It could also be a metaphor, if unconscious, of this trilogy's relationship to the past

Present Jack: The Force Awakens did indeed make excellent use of literal objects from the past of Star Wars, and did not shy away from using these as symbols if its relationship to the past movies. Think of the crashed ships on Jakku, Darth Vader's helmet (kept by a Vader-obsessed Kylo Ren), Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, and the Millennium Falcon itself (which was really the first "character" of the original trilogy we saw in the movie). So I was right about this, although I could have been more right; early drafts of the screenplay had characters exploring the underwater wreckage of the Second Death Star, and Maz Kanata going around the galaxy hunting Force-sensitive relics.

2) Past Jack: Why does Luke say that his father "HAS that power"--i.e., in the present tense? Is he still around? If so, I hope it's not Hayden Christensen's force ghost
 Present Jack: This turned out to be some artful misdirection on the part of whoever put the trailer together. Not only was it merely a replaying of lines Luke Skywalker spoke in an (absolutely beautiful) scene of Return of the Jedi, but Luke also does not even appear in the movie until the last minute or so, Darth Vader is definitely dead, and Hayden Christensen is nowhere in sight (for now).

3) Past Jack: The settings appear familiar in places. Desert planet, Ice planet, etc. The cast and crew have been very coy about the settings, saying things like "don't think Tatooine is the only desert planet" or "don't think Hoth is thPe only ice planet," etc. But why not just make them there?
Present Jack: The Force Awakens ended up not revisiting a single location from any prior movie (unless you count the Millennium Falcon), though the planets/places it did visit were very similar to past locations (Jakku-Tatooine, Takadona-Yavin IV, Starkiller Base-Hoth). I wish it did go back to old places, though, and I hope it does in the next two movies. I also hope we see planets that are both new and not overly similar to somewhere we've already been.

4) Past Jack: When robot-hand guy (Luke, presumably) lays his hand on R2-D2, he seems to be in some kind of volcanic environment. When New Villain uses the Force, he also seems to be in some kind of volcanic environment. Is this happening in the same place? And is the place...Mustafar? For all the prequel's failings, the idea of a hellish fire-world is visually appealing, at the very least. Could be an interesting callback.
Present Jack: Alas, The Force Awakens did not have any scenes on Mustafar, though I think that would have been pretty cool (maybe it will happen later? I could see Vader-obsessed Kylo Ren tracing Anakin's history back to that place for some reason...). Also, the scene of Luke laying a hand on R2-D2 turned out to be only a brief scene in Rey's Force vision.

5) Past Jack: Who is the chrome-plated Stormtrooper? Could this be the "Inquisitor" we keep hearing rumors about?
6) Present Jack: No, it was Captain Phasma, who didn't actually appear all that much in the movie despite looking really cool.

7) Past Jack: Han--i.e., Harrison Ford--actually looks HAPPY in the trailer. This is important. In "Crystal Skull" and in all the movies he's done lately, Harrison Ford has basically played a grumpy old man. I know it might be a bit much to extrapolate from just one scene and line of dialogue, but this is a good sign. Of course you'd be happy, ironic, and prone to one-liners if you are HAN SOLO, even if you're a 65+year-old Han Solo
8) Present Jack: I was totally right about this. Harrison Ford's reprising Han Solo was one of the best parts of the movie. He made an old Han Solo completely believable. He was old, sure, but still the same Han we knew and loved. A great final act for a great character.

9) Past Jack: Why does Han say that he and Chewie are "home"? Are they back in the Millennium Falcon? Had they lost it? Or are we going to learn about their backstory? 
10) Present Jack: I was right about this, though if I had studied up more on Star Wars before I saw this trailer, I would have recognized the faithfully-reproduced background of the Millennium Falcon from the previous films as what Han and Chewie were standing in front of at the end of the trailer. And they did lose the Falcon. We didn't learn much more about their back story, but I'm sure we'll get that in the new Han Solo movie, which I don't believe was announced until a few months later, on my 22nd birthday (July 7, 2015).  

10) Past Jack: On the whole, visually, everything looks pretty good so far. Abrams can be an overly-kinetic filmmaker, but this trailer, at least, shows a nice handling of action shots as well as a willingness to let the camera linger that has been almost entirely lost in mainstream modern cinema but which the original trilogy used in spades. I continue to maintain that, to the extent the Star Trek movies weren't perfect, it's because JJ was never really a Star Trek fan or someone familiar with that universe, but he is most definitely a Star Wars fan and familiar with that universe (just look at the way he turned the 2009 Star Trek movie into a "A New Hope"). So, in short, I don't think those movies can be used against him.
Present Jack: I stand by everything I said here. The Force Awakens definitely felt like a Star Wars movie, which was my and probably everyone's biggest concern going into it. Abrams definitely rose to the occasion, adopting some old-school filmmaking techniques and shedding some of his worse instincts as a filmmaker, and giving us some new iconic moments in the process. 

I mean, come on. This was beautiful. 

11) Past Jack: In sum, I remain cautiously optimistic about this movie. I think that the choices in cast, crew, direction, special-effects, story (goodbye, George Lucas!) have all been great so far. Will it achieve the difficult task of capturing that ineffable Star Wars movie feeling? I don't know. I guess we'll see in 8 months. I will use this post as a benchmark for it. Perhaps I'll send it to myself via Futureme.org in an email that I'll get the day the movie comes out.
Present Jack: The Force Awakens more than vindicated my cautious optimism, and definitely captured that "ineffable Star Wars movie feeling." I did not, however, send myself this post as an email to myself via Futureme.org that I got the day The Force Awakens came out, but I did decide to use this blog--which didn't exist last April--to say something about it anyway, and to use my past comments as a benchmark. So I was half-right, basically.

All in all, not a bad prediction record, I'd say. I might do something similar for the next round of trailers for Star Wars Episode VIII: The Gods of the Past*.

*My prediction, based on Snoke's mythic stature, Luke's presence at the "First Jedi Temple," and Kylo Ren's lightsaber based on ancient design, is that the next two Star Wars movies are going to delve deeply into an area of mythology only hinted at so far: the far-distant past of the galaxy, particularly the ancient origins of the Jedi-Sith feud. Hence, The Gods of the Past.