Total Star Wars Geekery: Heroism in The Rise of Skywalker Trailer

Point of personal privilege: Star Wars is awesome!

I don’t geek out often on these humble electronic pages… although I suppose one could argue that we who write with earnest verve of the South Dakota Legislature are geeks more rare and hermetic than the scholars of Klingon.

But I want to talk about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—not the movie that we don’t get to see until Christmas (arrrgghhh—already too much!), but just the trailer, maybe just the first 70 seconds of the trailer—because this 123-second film clip is great literature.

Here, watch:

What’s so great about a trailer that shows us nothing for ten seconds, then shows just one camera shot for another fifteen seconds before getting to business? Where are the fast cuts, the snappy lines, the Jabba slave-girl metal bikinis that we supposedly need to shout through the din of everything competing for our attenuated amygdalic attention to make us want to buy popcorn?

That’s Rey, our heroine, breathing heavily in that opening ten-second darkness (as ought we all be, as Lucasfilm promises us another Christmas epic to compete with that other holiday story that some pious geeks claim is the greatest ever told). But for all that breathing, our heroine isn’t getting excited. She’s showing us what heroines do. She’s showing us how to be heroes ourselves.

She’s chilling out.

She’s centering herself. She’s asserting her control of her thoughts, her emotions, her body. She takes control of her very breathing. With those two deep breaths at 0:16 and 0:19 (actors, pay attention to how much Daisy Ridley says in those scant, wordless seconds), Rey reins in the fear that could overwhelm and rush her into bad decisions. She clears the decks so she can hear the words of her teacher, the words that express all that she is about at that moment, alone, in the desert (again, deep mythos for Christmas) facing the challenge that she knows is coming before we hear the devilish whine of the twin ion engine at 0:29. She can assess the challenge, determine her best angle of attack (in this case, apparently, 180°, The Last Jedi  encapsulated and doubled-down: Vice Admiral Holdo was right and Poe was wrong), and, most importantly, remind herself why she is taking on this challenge and why her reasons are right (…but this is your fight—and with that thought, her lips close, showing her ultimate self-control and determination… not to mention Daisy Ridley’s and J.J.. Abrams’s understanding that even amidst the technical wonders of 21st-century cinema—or perhaps especially amidst them—the actor’s smallest gestures matter).

And then, after another patient fifteen seconds of rotating our vision through the battlefield, seeing up close as Rey sees in her mind the danger racing toward her (and notice the perfectly chosen background at 0:48 of three parallel ridges, the nearest falling away to reveal the farthest, emphasizing the speed, the perspective, and quite possibly the theme of this great trilogy of trilogies, a galaxy shaped by Anakin, Luke, and now the third in this succession of Skywalkers)—

—lightsaber!

—set in the sand!

—check your six and your plan one more time!

—GO!

The heroine launches into her plan with all her might. She leaps into a seemingly impossible (never tell me the odds) challenge ready to do what she knows she must, what she knows is right—

—and the screen goes black before we see if her plan works, because (a) this is a teaser and we have to wait ’til brackin’-frackin Christmas to find out if she wins (aaarrrggghhh!!!) and (b) because this 70 seconds is a story in itself, a tale that tells us heroism is not about victory or defeat but about rejecting fear, choosing our course, and doing what is right and necessary.

The rest of the trailer is fine, too. Lando Calrissian returns, reminding us that racing into the maw of overwhelming odds, as the beings in that storied cockpit always do, can (and should?) be fun. C-3PO, that shining gold pessimist who would tell us those odds, stands boldly at the mast of a sand skiff hurtling across a battlefield (while the humans duck!), then stands with his friends on another world facing the ultimate mystery/danger/challenge/surprise of this teaser.

And then the trailer ends with pure artistry in contrast. Where the first visual shows us Rey alone, the last visual frames Rey with her friends (though as the camera turns for the final shot to zoom out past the cliff to the sea and the wreckage, she is again the last person we see, alone in the frame facing danger). The trailer ends as it began, in darkness, but with icy double counterpoint. The trailer opens with our heroine Rey calming her breathing in the face of evil. The trailer treats us in the middle with the old pirate Lando laughing at whatever evil awaits when they leap out of hyperspace. The trailer ends with that evil laughing back, mocking our pitiful little band of insignificant rebels.

Laugh it up, scuzzball. Your mockery will not stop us any more than our fear will stop us. We will turn your mockery to motivation, turn our fear to reason and action. We will prevail over the darkness inside us, and we will strive mightily to prevail over you.

At least that’s what this trailer tells us, in 31 camera shots and six titles: how to be heroes like Rey.

If I’ve got wait another eight months (aaarrrggghhh!) to see the whole story, I’m going to make the most out of this little teaser… which by itself is surprisingly good literature in both message and composition.