Star Wars – The Force is Within Us All

Jillian Reynolds

On Monday, October 19, the world nearly exploded as the Star Wars franchise released the official trailer for its seventh movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which premiered December 18 in the US. With the trailer receiving over 33 million views within the first 24 hours of being uploaded on Youtube, the national excitement for the new movie was evident.

The trailer provided us with a preview of the multitude of new characters that are going to arrive on the big screen soon, including a former stormtrooper, an enemy out to finish Darth Vader’s work, a friendly robot, and a female lead with the potential of becoming a jedi. But, the trailer also promises us the return of some familiar and beloved characters, such as Hans Solo, Princess Leia, R2-D2, Chewbacca, and hopefully Luke Skywalker. From what we can tell, the movie seems to surround the premise of a hero’s journey to defeat a villain, much like many other action films. So, why exactly is there such a big hype surrounding this movie?

It could be because this movie is going to be a cinematic masterpiece, just like many believe it’s trailer is. Or, it could simply be because an interest in the Star Wars movies has been ingrained in our American blood since Episode I came out.

Sophomore Mia Formato comments, “There are two generations of fans who are going to see it, the original trilogy generation and the prequel generation.Since the prequels came out in the early 2000s, those fans have been waiting only around 15 years to see Episode VII, not XXX. They haven’t been waiting as long so they haven’t lost as much interest, creating a huge fan base. Also, they’re bringing back lots of characters from the original trilogy, so people are excited to see them.”

Formato isn’t alone with the thought that the hype is caused by fans who have already been awaiting this film.

Sophomore Seamus Reardon agrees that “the prequels were a huge turnout for a lot of long time fans. George Lucas always said ‘I’m going to come back from the future and say ‘this is the end of the series, i’m going to go back and see what we did in the beginning.”