7) No Familiar Faces, Focus On New Cast
Right off the bat, the first thing of note in the trailer is that it consists entirely of new faces. It would have been easy for J.J. Abrams to simply give us a few shots of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher, or devote a few seconds of screentime to iconic characters like C-3P0, R2-D2 or Chewbacca. Instead, they’re nowhere to be found, and the spotlight is turned toward franchise newcomers.
John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac take center stage, giving us our first glimpse at who they’re all playing in this new Star Wars chapter. We heard rumors that Boyega would be playing a Stormtrooper, and that seems to be confirmed by the opening shot of the trailer, which shows the Attack the Block star “awakening” on what looks like Tatooine.
Ridley, meanwhile, appears to be some kind of scavenger or Tatooine native, as she’s shown hopping onto the back of a new landspeeder and racing toward the Dubai set that we saw in previous videos released by Abrams himself.
Then, of course, there’s Inside Llewyn Davis star Oscar Isaac, shown piloting an X-Wing. How the new cast are connected both to one another and to the old cast remains to be seen, but it’s refreshing to see that Abrams is not using the old cast as a crutch.
This is, first and foremost, a new chapter in the Star Wars saga, and an exciting one at that.