The Second Teaser Trailer
I cannot remember having such a strong reaction to a teaser trailer. You know what I'm talking about, right? The second Star Wars Episode VII teaser trailer? I've seen it six or seven times now, and it still makes the hairs stand up on my arms every time.
I was a part of the original Star Wars generation. For years when I was young, the big boxes at Christmas were always the spaceships. I had the ATAT, the ATST, the Millenium Falcon, the Rebel Troop Transport, an X-Wing, the Hoth play-set, the Rancor Monster, Slave-1, a Snow-Speeder, and countless figures. For years of my childhood the two shelves across the bedroom above the head of my bed resembled the landing bays on the rim of a Death Star.
There's something about the music, and the voices that immediately transports my generation back to the moment we walked out of the cinema into the night, holding our parents hands, having had our entire world changed over the course of a couple of hours.
The moment Luke said “The Force is strong in my family”, I had a bit of a wibbly lip moment – and of course, when Han said “Chewy”, holding it together became even more difficult.
A week or so ago I found myself watching a video on YouTube with Kevin Smith talking about the experience of being invited onto the set – and walking onto the Millenium Falcon. As he described it, each step up the ramp transported him back another decade – until finally he stood inside the iconic spaceship, apologising to the girl showing him around for crying like a baby.
When we finally head to the cinema at Christmas this year, I will almost certainly become that little boy again, except this time I'll be holding the hands of children as we walk out into the night.