WookieeLeaks: The ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Trailer is Here to Change Your Life

ScreenCrush’s WookieLeaks is a weekly roundup of everything ‘Star Wars’! From ‘Episode 7,’ to the upcoming spinoffs and the TV shows, if it pertains to that long ago, far away galaxy, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, the trailer you’ve been waiting for arrives, the first details of the first spin-off leak online, and Carrie Fisher talks about being a “legacy” character.

The ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Trailer is (Just About) Here

UPDATE: Here it is. Go nuts! And if you want to go even more nuts, we’ve gone through the trailer shot by shot over here. The original text, from before the trailer arrived and changed everything, follows below.

By the time you’re reading this, chances are high that the trailer for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is already online and you have already watched it a dozen times. But if this week’s WookieeLeaks is catching you in the sweet spot of hours between the arrival of Friday, November 27, 2014 and the actual online launch of the most anticipated movie trailer of all time, consider this your place to anxiously wait along with the rest of us.

Of course, hardcore fans will want to see the first teaser on the big screen before they watch if on their tiny computer monitors. Disney and LucasFilm know this, which is why 30 theaters from around the country were selected to show the trailer in front of their films this Thanksgiving weekend. There’s a strong chance you acquired your tickets days ago, but just in case you missed out, here’s where you can see the trailer big and loud in the coming days:

And, as we have previous reported, the trailer will apparently go wide with the release of ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.’ We’ve got to hand it to the marketing folks on this one. They could have easily just dumped the trailer online and gotten a huge reaction, but by building up to the release, teasing it out and limiting its exposure in theaters, they’ve transformed this into a bonafide event. The people at the top know you’re excited and they’re going to take advantage of that for the next year as the build up the actual release of the film continues.

The Plot of the First ‘Star Wars’ Spin-Off Revealed, Maybe

Most of the past week was spent speculating about the release of the first ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ teaser, but something else very cool slipped online. Something very cool, but also possibly very fake. However, if it is fake, LucasFilm had better get someone working on this concept because it sounds too cool to write off.

It has lone been speculated that the first ‘Star Wars’ spin-off film from director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Gary Whitta would be a Boba Fett movie, but according to the latest rumors, that’s only half right. If the most recent report is to be believed, the film will find a team of bounty hunters (including Fett, we presume) who are tasked with pulling off the most dangerous heist in the galaxy: stealing the plans for the original Death Star from the Empire.

Yes, the same plans that Leia smuggles into R2-D2 in the original 1977 film. Yes, the plans that actually send Luke and Obi-Wan on their grand quest to begin with. Yes, this could be an ‘Ocean’s 11’-style caper set in the ‘Star Wars’ universe that gives the antiheroes of the saga some time in the spotlight while filling in corner of the original trilogy that we didn’t even realize needed filling in until right now.

That sounds cool, but there’s more! The same report claims that the Millennium Falcon will somehow be involved, but not Han Solo. That detail seems weird, since Han and his ship are present and accounted for elsewhere at this point in the story. However, the more interesting point claims that one of the new characters in this film will first be introduced in ‘The Force Awakens,’ where he will presumably be an old man. Could this be Max von Sydow‘s cyborg junk dealer we’ve heard so little about?

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait until Edwards’ film actually arrives in 2016 to know for sure.

‘The Force Awakens’ Bits and Pieces

With that trailer on everyone’s minds, it was a pretty slow week for genuine gossip-mongering, but fans hoping for new details about ‘The Force Awakens’ will find a few decent breadcrumbs strewn about the internet. This first one could be considered a spoiler (an incredibly minor spoiler, to be fair), so proceed with caution.

The folks at Star Wars Underworld claim to have uncovered a single line of dialogue from the film. Yes, we’ve moved on from written descriptions of concept art to reveals of potential lines of dialogue. This is what obsessiveness looks like! Anyway, we know that the film will supposedly begin with Han Solo and Chewbacca piloting a ship that’s not the Millennium Falcon and we can safely assume that they are reunited with the iconic ship sooner rather than later. And this is supposedly what Han says when he steps on board his old vessel:

"Chewie, we're back home!"

Like we said: it was a slow week. Still, that’s the kind of line that, if delivered by the rapidly not-giving-a-crap Harrison Ford with the proper amount of enthusiasm, could send the nostalgia corner of our grey matter into overdrive.

Oh, and there’s also this report that Lupita Nyong’o is playing a motion capture character in the film. This could be true, but wouldn’t it be really weird to cast a fresh-faced Oscar winner in a role that completely hides her face in every way? If so, what a weird choice. Her character remains one of the most secretive in the entire production, so no one can confirm or deny this quite yet.

Finally, the one-and-only Carrie Fisher spoke about the new film while attending a charity event in Hong Kong. Classy and self-deprecating, she introduced a new phrase that we’re probably going to hear a lot regarding the older performers: “legacy characters.” Here‘s the full quote:

“We’re referred to as the legacy characters. No one knows that,” Fisher said of the tag given to the trio played by herself, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill and Harrison “Han Solo” Ford.

“I always thought that was the worst, oldest word you could ever … It’s something I heard as we were going along: ‘the legacy characters’. That word is very weird to me. It means you have grey hair.”

...

“The thing is about these movies: they’re part of everyone’s childhood and that’s what’s so extraordinary about them.

“People have known me all their lives – better than I’ve known myself. And they’ve liked me a lot more than I’ve liked myself a lot of those times. That’s what I think is so powerful; it’s these fairytales and there’s going to be more. There’s something so darling. There’s this British word, chuffed. I’m chuffed to be a part of it.”

When asked what it was like to actually return to the character that introduced her to the world and defined so much of her life, Fisher said:

“It was strangely … ordinary. But then that is sort of my ordinary. It was nice to see everyone in the same room, only half of us looked melted. That’s what legacy means in the original Latin. Melted, once young people.”

Melted or not, it wouldn’t be a ‘Star Wars’ sequel without Fisher returning to one of the most badass ladies in all of modern fiction. Those new characters have a lot to live up to if they want to tussle with the “legacy” folks.

Another Animated Series is Supposedly in the Works

Since ‘Star Wars Rebels’ is a critically acclaimed smash hit with a second season already on the way, if shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Disney and LucasFilm are already considering a companion series. What may surprise you is the setting. While ‘Rebels’ takes place just before the events of the original trilogy, this rumored series will take place decades later, in and around the events of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’

It’s a strategy that makes perfect sense, especially if the rumors about the first spin-off film (see above) prove to be true. ‘Rebels’ can keep the older universe fresh and fertile in the minds of fans, priming any spin-off film set in that era. This new series can play in the sandbox that J.J. Abrams and his collaborators have built, keeping everyone invested in all of the fresh, new stuff. One show for nostalgia, one show for expansion (which will lead to future nostalgia). If nothing else, the folks and Disney and LucasFilm sure know how to sell us things we could never say no to.

Everything Else

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ doesn’t even hit theaters for 13 months, but the Rian Johnson-directed ‘Star Wars: Episode 8’ has already found a new production designer in Tim Burton regular Rick Heinrichs.

If you still like LEGOs and you still like Yoda, this trailer will probably be of interest to you. At the very least, it’ll be of interest to your kid. But only if s/he likes Yoda and LEGOs. And if you raised him/her right, then that is true.

The short film below (which is admittedly pretty impressive) pits Batman and Darth Vader against each other in a battle to the death. Although both characters are great in their own special ways, the outcome is correct.