The new Star Wars trailer, explained

This morning the last trailer of the new Star Wars movie was released, the ninth of the famous science fiction saga, which will conclude the story that began with the first film of 1977 (at least this is how it is presented, but who believes it?). The original title of the film is The Rise of Skywalker – in Italy Skywalker's Rise – and will be released in Italian cinemas on December 18th. The protagonists will still be Rey and his friends Finn and Poe Dam, in addition to the almost bad Kylo Ren. Given that it will be the last of a nine-film saga, a final duel is expected between good and bad, and the closing of the stories of different characters. The trailer does not anticipate anything of what will happen in the film, but it is full of details and references that are difficult to identify, and that give some more elements to understand what film will be Skywalker's Rise. We analyzed them scene by scene.

The trailer starts with Rey running in the jungle of a planet that looks a lot like Endor's woody moon: it is the birthplace of the tender Ewoks and the place where most of the Return of the Jedi, the sixth film of the saga. It's just one of the many references to that film, which closed the old trilogy (that one that came out between 1977 and 1983, and which includes the films from the fourth to the sixth of the so-called "official canon").

After showing us Rey running and getting excited in other contexts, the trailer shows what looks like an assembly of the Rebel Alliance, that is, the good guys, who at the end of the eighth film of the saga had been almost defeated by the First Order, ie the bad guys ( they had only been saved thanks to a diversion from Luke Skywalker). In the group we especially notice the pilot Poe Dameron and Lando Carlissian, one of the most appreciated secondary characters of the old trilogy. In the film spinoff Only, released last year, the character of Lando was played by Donald Glover; in 'Rise of Skywalker instead there will be Billy Dee Williams, the actor of the old trilogy.

The Rebel Alliance, as indeed in all the films of the saga, has no easy life: in almost all the scenes it is shown under attack. In a particularly agitated piece we can see one of the few new characters introduced in the film: it is the actor Dominic Monaghan – Charlie in Lost, Merry in the Lord of the Rings – who probably plays an Alliance soldier.

In the next scene, a rather recognizable spaceship to the fans of the saga emerges from the jungle: it is the first animated object that is shown in the first scene of the very first film, released in 1977. It is the historic spaceship of Princess Leia, the one that is captured by Darth Vader in the opening minutes of the film. From the succession of images in the trailer we can imagine that Leia visits Rey on Endor's woody moon. Carrie Fisher died in December 2016, but will be present in theRise of Skywalker because the film included some scenes shot and then cut into Force Awakening, seventh film of the saga and first of the last trilogy.

Shortly after we see Rey and Kylo Ren fighting over the ruins of what appears to be the second Death Star, the huge space station built by the Empire – the ancestors of the First Order – in the old trilogy, partially destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi. The trailer seems to suggest that part of the wreckage of the Death Star has fallen into the sea of ​​this planet, but it's not clear if they are still usable.

In one of the most fascinating scenes of the trailer you can see some First Order spaceships flying towards a huge iceberg, which seems to float on a dark and water-covered planet. The planet should be called Kijimi and will appear for the first time in the saga in one of the official novels, Force Collector, which will be released a month beforeRise of Skywalker.

We don't know much more, except that it is the birthplace of a new character (we get there) and that it almost certainly hosts the throne that we see in the next scene. The throne belongs to the Emperor, the main antagonist of the old trilogy, whose presence in theRise of Skywalker had already been confirmed in the first trailer.

A Lucasfilm executive confirmed that the throne seen in the trailer was created from some sketches designed in 1981 by Ralph McQuarrie, a well-known American illustrator who worked on all the films of the old trilogy.

1981 Emperor's throne room thumbnail sketches by Ralph McQuarrie for #ReturnoftheJedi. #StarWars #TheRiseOfSkywalker pic.twitter.com/I6insw60vJ

– Phil Szostak (@PhilSzostak) October 22, 2019

In one of the busiest scenes in the trailer we see dozens of Rebel Alliance spaceships lining up for what looks like a battle. Also this scene remembers one already seen in Return of the Jedi, the final battle around the second Death Star. Just like then, the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's spaceship, leads the charge. At the bottom right, some impallinato have recognized Ghost, the starship of the protagonists of the animated series Star Wars Rebels, aired from 2013 to 2018.

"I would like to look at my friends for the last time," says C-3PO while a little monster is fixing his circuits. Many saw us as a kind of farewell and started talking about the "sacrifice of C-3PO", taking it for granted that it will die to save the universe or something of the kind.

Actually C-3PO "has a long history of death prophecies, which it does in virtually every scene in which it appears," he explained on Mashable Chris Taylor, a technology journalist who wrote one of the most complete books on the Star Wars saga. Taylor is right: C-3PO often uses melodramatic tones to comment on the things that happen in the various films. "We are dead" is one of the most famous jokes he pronounces in the very first film of the saga.

In the same scene also appears Zorri Bliss, the new secondary character of whom very little is known; only that he comes from Kijimi, the frozen planet, and that he wears a strange helmet that reminds some of those wearing Daft Punk. It will be played by Keri Russell, famous above all for being the protagonist of the TV series The Americans.

About the scenes in which Carrie Fisher, the director of theRise of Skywalker J.J. Abrams said that "with the support and assent of his daughter we found a way to honor the legacy of Leia by using material shot for the Force Awakening». Abrams added that along with Fisher he will play his own daughter, Billie Lourd, who also had a small role in the two previous films.

Polygon he hypothesized that in addition to the embrace scene with Rey and the one that Fisher filmed with Lourd, there are two more that could end up in the film: one was released in the special contents of the Force Awakening, and shows Leia ordering a commander of the Rebel Alliance to report to the Senate the crimes committed by the First Order. However, inserting this scene presents two problems: the character Leia speaks about dies in the eighth film, while the Senate is dissolved between the seventh and eighth.

Abrams may have decided to use another scene cut in Force Awakening but it was glimpsed in the trailers: the one in which Maz Kanata – the character played by Lupita Nyong’o – delivers Luke Skywalker's lightsaber to Leia.

Among the most bizarre things seen in the trailer, at one point a group of characters led by Finn starts a charge on the back of those that look like horses. In a later fragment we reconstruct that the whole scene takes place in space. Thanks to an episode of the official Star Wars show on YouTube we learn that horses are actually gods orbaks, that is of the biggest and hairiest horses.

Towards the end, the trailer shows further references to the Return of the Jedi: Rey and Kylo Ren clash in the throne room of the second Death Star, the one in which Darth Vader killed the Emperor (or so we thought).

Soon after, Rey and Kylo Ren destroy what appears to be Darth Vader's armor, damaged precisely during the Emperor's death. From the first film we know that Kylo Ren had kept the helmet of Darth Vader, so we can assume that he had also kept the rest of the armor.

In the very last scene, Rey observes a character that we see only from behind: the black mantle that flutters from a kind of throne – and the voice of the actor who plays him in the background – makes it clear that he is the Emperor, who will therefore be the main antagonist also in this film.