They Put Han Solo Back on Screen and I Lost My Entire Mind

The second trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens dropped today and yes, I watched it immediately, and yes, something happened somewhere in my chest that I’d rather not examine too closely. I have complicated feelings about J.J. Abrams. About what Disney does to the things it acquires. About franchises that eat their own mythology and sell it back to you as product. All of that is real and I believe all of it.

And then they put Han Solo on screen. He says they’re home. And I’m just—gone. Completely gone.

The internet collapsed into a single repeated word the moment the trailer dropped. Thirty years of accumulated mythology compressed into two minutes of desert landscapes and new masks and that chord sequence that still does something to your nervous system no matter how many times you’ve heard it. December feels very far away right now.

What I keep coming back to is weight. The prequels had spectacle in abundance and felt weightless—all surface, no gravity, nothing that hurt. The original trilogy had this quality of real stakes, of characters making terrible choices and paying for them. Failure was allowed to exist. I want that back. I want to care about what happens to these people. I don’t know if Abrams is the director who gives me that. But I watched the trailer three times in a row, so whatever my doubts are, they’re losing.