Star Wars Saturday: A Frame-by-Frame Analysis of the Last Jedi Trailer

A Frame-by-Frame Analysis of the Last Jedi Trailer

          And now for something I’m sure everyone else has already done by this point.

          The first trailer for The Last Jedi’s been out for over a week now, has been viewed millions of times around the world, and it’s gotten everyone pretty excited for what Lucasfilm and Rian Johnson have in store for us come December. So I thought it’d be fun to take a closer look at everything in the trailer, give my thoughts and theories as to what’s going on, and all that good stuff. So with that being said…

          We start off the same way we began the first Force Awakens teaser: a really loud note accompanied by footage of one of the main characters suddenly appearing.

          This time around it’s Rey popping up, and she seems to have just been through something tiring. Has she just escaped something chasing her? Is there some sort of monster on Ahch-To? Or maybe she just smelled Luke’s robes? 

          And here we have a shot of the beautiful Ahch-To island. It kinda looks like a shoe from this angle.

          One thing I’d like to know is whether this island was what Luke was looking for when he disappeared. Han mentions in Force Awakens “People who knew him best think he went looking for the first Jedi Temple.” Judging by what we’ve seen of the island so far it looks like the kind of place where an old order of Jedi would settle down and start training. And while Ahch-To is listed on Wookieepedia as the location of the temple, I don’t know if we’ve heard anything official from any of the books or comics or anything that confirms it.

          While we get these beautiful glamour shots, we can hear Luke’s voice. “Breathe. Just breathe. Now, reach out. What do you see?”

          I think it’s safe to say Luke’s going to be somewhat of a reluctant master to Rey similarly to how Yoda was for him back in Empire. Considering the Force has been thrown out of balance yet again according to Lor San Tekka in Force Awakens, teaching Rey to stick to the light side might be a crucial point of their relationship, especially since Luke’s been tempted by the dark side before.

          Rey contemplates swimming away after spending twenty minutes with Luke.

          This shot actually has an interesting parallel with shots from not only the Original Trilogy, but the Prequel Trilogy as well.

          For starters, here we see Luke with his back to the camera as he burns dear old dad in a red-hued scene from Return of the Jedi.

          And now here’s Anakin hanging out in Theed Palace in a green-hued scene from Attack of the Clones.

          Not only do all three scenes feature the main protagonist of the trilogy with their back to the camera, they each have a specific colour. Plus if Rey turns out to be a Skywalker this’ll be a fun way to tie the three together. Whether coincidence or intentional, it’s a really cool nod in my opinion.

          I think this scene takes place at about the same time as the one that starts off the teaser. Similar if not the same location, Rey’s got her hand down on the rock, and so on. She seems to be using the Force to levitate these pebbles around, but I’m sure there’s more context we’re not getting here.

          Our dearly departed General.

          What’s really interesting is the layered audio in these next three shots. The music, Rey’s dialogue, and even bits from the Original Trilogy are mixed together. These shots begin right after Luke asks “What do you see?” When Leia appears, we hear a snippet of Rey’s Theme while Rey herself says “Light.” Meanwhile, you can faintly hear in the background Leia from A New Hope whispering “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi…”

          And continuing on, here’s what’s left of Kylo’s mask. Judging by the look of this trailer (and the fact we see maskless Kylo later on) I’m guessing that he’s done wearing a helmet for the rest of the trilogy. It was a cool way to give him Vader parallels the first time around, but now without it he might become more of a stronger villain himself.

          Continuing with the layered audio, this shot is paired with Kylo’s Theme and Rey says “Darkness.” Faintly in the background you can hear Obi-Wan from A New Hope say “Seduced by the dark side…” Obviously in context he’s talking about Vader, but it also works for Kylo’s story.

          And finally we’ve got a mysterious bookshelf. No real music cues here, but Rey finishes by saying “The balance.” with Yoda in the background saying his famous line from Empire “Surrounds us, binds us.”

          So what’s interesting about this bookshelf is obviously what books it has on it. Judging by the wooden look of it I’m going to take a guess and say it’s on Ahch-To. So if Ahch-To is the first Jedi Temple like we’ve been speculating, what books would be there?

          Perhaps the Journal of the Whills? For those who don’t know, the title for A New Hope way back in the first script drafts was “Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars”. Doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, does it? Despite the Journal of the Whills being one of many things dropped from the title, it lives on even in the canon universe. The novelization for Force Awakens begins with a passage from the Journal, Yoda explains in the Revenge of the Sith book that Qui-Gon learned the secret of how to become a Force ghost by studying the Whills, and Rogue One’s Chirrut and Baze are “Guardians of the Whills” with a new book coming out titled exactly that. And just for clarification, the Whills are holy shamans extremely spiritual to the Force, and the Journal chronicles all the major events that happen in the galaxy.

          So what better place to find the legendary Journal of a holy group of Force shamans that’ve been hinted at in the two most recent Star Wars movies than at the first Jedi temple itself? It’s either that or I’m completely wrong, which is more likely than you’d think.

          This could be the cover of one of the books, and since this shot is immediately after the bookshelf the trailer is obviously trying to make us think that. Whatever this is it has the symbol of the Jedi Order on it, and it’s definitely seen better days.

          You can see someone put their hand on it, but we can’t make out who it is because they’re wearing a glove. We’ve never seen Rey wearing gloves and Luke isn’t wearing any in Force Awakens, so it might not be one of them. The colour of the gloves is not dissimilar to the colour of the outfit we saw the new character Rose wearing in a screenshot, but I think that’s stretching it. This will likely be a mystery we have to wait for December to be solved.

          Here’s a tracking shot of Rey swatting flies with her lightsaber while Luke looks on.

          Some people think they see Yoda sitting on top of that big rock to Rey’s left. To those people I say you should probably watch Return of the Jedi again.

          Concluding the conversation between Luke and Rey, Luke says “It’s so much bigger.” Just for clarity since it probably got lost in all my rambling, here’s the whole exchange.

LUKE: “Breathe. Just breathe. Now, reach out. What do you see?”

REY: “Light. Darkness. The balance.”

LUKE: “It’s so much bigger.”

          Now you could argue that this conversation doesn’t actually happen in the movie and is in fact three separate lines tied together through the power of trailer editing. If not though, this could add a lot more depth to the Force. In all movies before we’ve seen only the light side and the dark side, with Anakin bringing the balance (through murdering all the Jedi) that’s now been thrown out of whack. Could Luke or Rey become the first ever Force-user that wields both sides?

          I really love the visuals here of these ships kicking up the bright red sand as they fly through the desert. It’s little touches like that that make Star Wars feel so amazing.

          We know from the Disney Parks panel at Celebration that this new planet is called Crait, and will be the site of a major battle between the Resistance and the First Order. In the distance you can see the First Order walkers that were only glimpsed in Force Awakens. As cool as it looks, it does bring up one big concern for me. While I love Force Awakens a lot, I definitely agree with the gripe that it follows a lot of the same story beats as A New Hope. Having a scene with land-based ships fighting walkers definitely bears a resemblance to Empire Strikes Back, and I really don’t want another repeat movie. I could be completely wrong, but stuff like this does make me feel a bit cautious.

          Here’s Finn being placed into some sort of medical capsule. We know he’s going to be back in action before long, so I think he’ll be out of his coma within the first half hour of the movie.

          Poe continues to fail to get into his X-Wing before it explodes.

          I think it’s become law that every Star Wars trailer needs a shot of the Falcon fighting some TIE Fighters at some point. The real question for me here is what’s happening here. We last saw the Falcon on Ahch-To with Chewie and R2, so could the First Order finally manage to locate Luke? I get the feeling he’ll be leaving the island before the end of the movie, and being pursued by the First Order is a good reason as any to get going.

          Rey charging at something with her lightsaber ignited. There’s really not much to say about this, since the lighting and blurry background make it impossible to tell where this scene is taking place. Whatever it is, she doesn’t seem happy about it.

          Here’s our first look at post-Force Awakens Kylo, complete with the scar Rey left him with on Starkiller Base. I like the fun parallel that his scar is similar to the one Anakin has in Revenge of the Sith, being over his right eye.

          One thing I’d really like to see in this movie is Kylo’s training. At the end of Force Awakens Snoke orders Hux to bring Kylo to him to “complete his training”. It’d be interesting to see the parallels between Snoke training Kylo and Luke training Rey.

          Here’s a familiar shot. This obviously takes place at the burning of Luke’s academy, but what’s really interesting is what Luke himself is doing. In Force Awakens when Rey has her vision after touching Luke’s old lightsaber, one of the first things she sees is a hooded Luke putting his hand on R2 while something burns in front of them. Well, here’s hooded Luke sitting next to R2 while the academy burns in front of them. But what I find really interesting about this is the next shot.

          Here we see Phasma leading a Stormtrooper platoon out of fire. Normally this wouldn’t mean anything, but take this in context of what we just saw. Could this be the same scene as the burning of Luke’s academy? Was this where the First Order made their first big move against the galaxy, and Kylo was the one that orchestrated it? That’d be a good reason why they keep him around; they owe him for getting them the power they didn’t have in the first place. Well, that plus the fact that a force user is someone you really want on your side.

          Of course it wouldn’t be Star Wars without a space battle of some kind (unless of course you’re Battlefront 2015) and here’s the Resistance and the First Order facing off above what I’m pretty sure is D’Qar. I’m guessing this takes place pretty early on in the movie, since it apparently starts immediately where Force Awakens ends and the Resistance needs to pack up and move somewhere new before the First Order storms their base.

          And to finish off, quite possibly the biggest moment of the trailer. We see Luke’s shadow, and he says “I only know one truth. It’s time for the Jedi…to end.”

          So the big question on everyone’s mind is why oh why does Luke Skywalker of all people want the Jedi to end? We spent three movies watching the guy work his rear off trying to become a Jedi and now he’s just done? What happened to him in the last thirty years?

          A theory I’ve seen making the internet rounds is that Luke’s gone to the dark side, but I kind of find that hard to believe. His entire arc in Return of the Jedi is being tempted by the dark side before ultimately choosing to stick to the light and succeed where his father failed. Having him go dark out of nowhere would kind of make Jedi feel even weirder than Force Awakens already made it.

          I think the far more likely possibility is that Luke thinks there’s no place in the galaxy for the old style of Jedi any more. We know from the prequels that their connection to the force made the Jedi become arrogant, which allowed Palpatine’s master plan to come to fruition. Could Luke have made the same mistakes as his predecessors and accidentally led Kylo down the wrong path as a result?

          What I love about this trailer overall is that it does a great job at getting you excited for what The Last Jedi has up its sleeve, while at the same time barely telling you anything. Most of this recap was just me speculating over what’s going on in these shots, and I love that. Unlike the Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer from a few weeks ago I really like going into a movie barely knowing what the plot is. Considering how Force Awakens pulled a similar tactic I find it likely we’ll be seeing it again here.

          So that’s it for me. See you guys in two weeks for my May the 4th special.