by: Douglas Sullivan

Last week, the full trailer for The Force Awakens was released to a very eager public during the halftime break of Monday Night Football. Fan enthusiasm boiled over; movie theater websites crashed as tickets for the movie’s release date went on sale and the preview was watched in record-breaking numbers.

I had honestly considered not watching the trailer. I was already fully on board with Episode VII, and I thought I might be able to preserve a bit more of the unspoiled experience for the theater if I could just wait a couple more months. Well, I couldn’t – it took me about ten seconds to decide to watch it, and then watch it again. And again.

J.J. and company held back on behalf of those of us who were unable to for ourselves. Defying modern-day expectations, the Force Awakens trailer doesn’t reveal much more than we’d seen the teasers hint at.  There were brief glimpses of R2-D2 and Leia; we were given a new look at Han. The real surprise was ultimately what was withheld: We have not been introduced to Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke, who provided the voiceover for the initial teaser; the trailer leaves out Maz Kanata and C-3PO and Max Von Sydow. Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker is still nowhere to be found in any of the film’s marketing.

I appreciate their restraint. I don’t want to know everything when I sit down in the theater on December 17th to watch this movie for the first time, and they know they don’t need to show us everything to sell it to us. That said, the trailer also sent my excitement for this movie through the roof, and waiting to explore the Star Wars universe 30 years after Jedi became impossible.

A few people have strung together the released preview footage and it’s really compelling to see the cumulative effect of these images. Jay and I sat down and attempted to expand on that further. We compiled an extended trailer utilizing the U.S. teasers, the full trailer, the Korean teaser, John Boyega’s Twitter feed, the broadcast “sneak peek” clips, the San Diego Comic Con presentation reel, and more. We broke out the scores and sound effects libraries from the original trilogy to build a new edit shot by shot. We even created a handful of new ones. It’s incredibly fun to play in this sandbox! We put this edit together because we couldn’t help ourselves, but the result seems like something worth sharing with fans like us. Even if you’ve watched the other Episode VII trailer mashups a few times already (as we have), there should be a few fun surprises for you in here.

We’re less than two months away from The Force Awakens. Hope this helps tide you over until the lights go down on December 17th!