Fan Service: The Re-Telling of Star Wars

Nothing's changed really.  I mean everything's changed, but nothing's changed.  That's the way you want it to be.

    - Mark Hamill

Allow me to geek out here for a second before moving on to more serious, less epic things today.

Now, analysing a movie based on its trailer is a bit like calling an election from the earliest polls, but STILL!

From everything we've seen so far, it seems like JJ Abrams and crew distilled everything that worked in the Original Trilogy and has recombined the beats into an entirely new but completely evocative film (even internally referenced by Kylo Ren as a fanboy)

- Hero dressed like a Stormtrooper?  Check, but this time he IS a stormtrooper

- Wistful youth on a desert planet?  It's Rey, not Luke.

- Hero being helped to their feet?  Instead of Ben and Luke, it's Rey and Finn. And speaking of Ben...

- Heroes meeting wise mentor with links to the past?  Han is the new Obi-wan, which comes with certain implications

- The Empire searching for something on a desert planet - except perhaps it's Finn this time, not a droid?

- Yet the droid is there on the planet, walking with our fresh-faced hero across the dunes.

- A hero getting captured and tortured, with Poe being the new Leia

- The brief connect between heroes beneath an X-Wing (but no shouts of "Carrie!" this time)\

- the Millennium Falcon entering hyperspace - but the reverse of the perspective we're used to

- Perhaps twins?  Perhaps a shift from one side of the Force to the other?  

It goes on and on - the embrace between Han and Leia, Han and Chewie with their hands behind their heads in a green environment, etc, etc.

All of this implies a great deal of respect for the franchise and a deep-rooted level of passion from the film-makers themselves.

They have meticulously taken all the things they themselves love about Star Wars and have built a fresh story around those iconic beats, resulting in something that is so familiar that when it throws in left curves, we will genuinely be surprised.

Plus, the sheer epic-ness has been cranked up.  The emotions (and, it would seem, the emotional arcs) are deeper, raw.  You can feel the awakening - it's drawing you in.  It's drawing us all in.

These are expert fans making the movie they want to see.  

And I can't wait to see it.