This Black Friday the world awakens to The Force Awakens

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the title The Force Awakens has a meta component to it, a subconscious signalling that a franchise which slept through its last three film installments has had a jolt of caffeine. And the above teaser furthers that thinking.

Back when he was directing the original Star Wars, George Lucas’s sole direction to the cast was “faster, more energy,” or something to that effect. With his prequels, he switched to “let’s just shoot this crap and see how much CGI we can cram into every corner during the next year an a half of post-production.” J.J. Abrams at least appears to have latched onto some of the former. And while the teaser delivers notes that will send devoted fans scurrying to watch it again (Stormtroopers! Ties! X-Wings! The Falcon!), the real “awakening” will come when Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill show up once more — the new corporate overlords at Disney are wise to save that for later.

It’s surprising how much of the leaked information of the past months appears to be spot on, including the somewhat nonsensical villain lightsaber with its mini-saber hilt. Which leaves me concerned that certain rumors about one character killing another character might just be true. We’ll see next December.