The First Star Wars: The Force Awakens Footage Will Probably Be Seen Here

By Nick Venable | Published 9 years ago

We’re at that crossroads when the rumor mill takes a brief pause from churning out different descriptions of what the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer might show audiences, and it’s now squarely focused on when we’ll get our first look at J.J. Abrams‘ new blockbuster. The latest clue buzzing around is that the (assumedly epic) teaser will be front-loaded onto Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies when it’s released on December 17. One giant film to introduce another? That sounds very Hollywood.

We’re not treating this as straight gospel, of course, as the news comes to us from the website StarWars7News.com, not the most prestigious of journalism outlets. Their biggest piece of data comes from a tweet from someone named Reece Steel, who claims to have spoken with the film’s first assistant director Tommy Gormley, who turned him onto the Tolkien adaptation as the way to go to find the teaser. Here’s a shot of the tweet, which was later deleted, along with Reece Steel’s entire account. Conspiracy?

This is hardly a case for Deep Throat, but it’s still something. There’s a secondary thread of “proof” here as well, as one of the website’s writers spoke with a local theater manager (though it doesn’t say where, obviously) who says he believes that the Star Wars teaser is coming with The Hobbit sequel. He says they don’t get that much word in advance, but that it isn’t a part of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 release. He also talked about companies not being allowed to cross-promote, but that doesn’t really prove or disprove anything.

If not The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, there really aren’t a whole lot of movies that are big enough to take on a Star Wars teaser in the coming months. They’re probably not going to put it on a comedy or a dark drama or action movie, which means February’s Jupiter Ascending from the Wachowskis is the next possible film that fits into the epic space opera genre, but would Abrams wait another two months to ramp anticipation up? Granted, I’m sure Abrams would be perfectly fine with keeping every second of footage hidden from audiences until they step into the theaters on December 18, 2015, but that’s not how studios work.

What’s going to be in that teaser, anyway? If you listen to some people, it’ll be a mostly dialogue-free affair with character shots and some of John Williams music playing. But if you listen to other people, there’s a lot of shit happening in it, though still not any strict plot reveals. And then if you listen to even more people, the teaser is going to give us our first clear look at the new villain.

The best way to play this is to put yourself in cryogenic sleep, to be woken up only after the trailer is officially out. Of course, you might miss out on some other things in life, but what else is there besides Star Wars, really?

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