Watch Saturday Night Live Mock The Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

With the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer appearing the day after Thanksgiving and wasting no time in becoming the most viewed movie preview of all time, you had to know this was coming, and the Saturday Night Live parody is here. The digital short showed up on last night’s episode, hosted by James Franco, with musical guest Nicki Minaj, and now you can watch it for yourself below without having to sift through the rest of the show.

This video mixes footage from the actual trailer, like that shot of John Boyega’s stormtrooper popping into frame or Daisy Ridley’s character riding off across the desert on that new speeder, with new images of the cast. It took me a few times to realize that it’s Franco under that Luke Skywalker outfit, shuffling around with his lightsaber walker.

The joke here is basically that the original trio of stars, and subsequently their characters, are old now, and they milk this concept for all it’s worth. It’s pretty obvious, and you might have hoped they’d come up with something slightly more original. But there are still a couple of moderately humorous moments, like when the much talked about ball droid rolls past and Han Solo stops and says, “What the fuck was that?” Or when Luke uses the Force to sort his daily pills (I love that the letters on his container use the Star Wars font). Like most things on SNL these days, this is wildly hit and miss (it’s like a microcosm of the larger show). While some bits are funny, others just come across as mean spirited. Then again, that’s always kind of been SNL’s jam.

Because the returning players don’t actually appear in the trailer, the biggest thing we took away from this video is the question, what if they really do come off as too old? I don’t necessarily they will, and I’m not too worried. Ford is the oldest of the three (he’s 72, while Hamill and Fisher are 63 and 58, respectively), and broken leg aside, he’s still pretty spry in his film roles. But it’s a question that we’ve all been skirting around since their participation was announced.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens everywhere in just over a year, on December 18, 2015. And in case you missed it somehow, like you were being held captive in a dark basement somewhere, here is the actual trailer.

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