I find it a little bewildering that we're at the point where simply announcing the title of an upcoming franchise film like "Avengers: Endgame" or "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker" can be a hypable moment, and a dropping a teaser trailer can be an event on the same level as one of those Apple product launches that Steve Jobs was famous for. Instead of Steve Jobs, however, Disney went and recruited Stephen Colbert to be their panel emcee, who happily worked up the crowd of convention-goers before bringing all the creative talent on stage to promote the new film. The public may have cooled on the "Star Wars" franchise over the last two years, but Disney certainly isn't treating it that way.
I have to marvel at the lengths Disney and Lucasfilm went to for this event, getting a room full of hardcore nerds together to watch the teaser premiere, flying out all the talent for appearances, and even putting Ian McDiarmid onstage afterwards to shout "Roll it again!" and push the reactions even further. If you didn't have the $50-60 dollars for a convention ticket, you could watch the whole panel being streamed live if you wanted - I found a recording on Youtube over the weekend. It all paid off for Lucasfilm, though. The internet was buzzing madly about "Star Wars" all Friday afternoon, and there was a ton of speculation about what the title could mean and what we could expect from the new film in December.
As for the trailer itself, well, personally I find it a little worrying. The marketing is following the lead of "The Force Awakens," emphasizing the return of familiar faces from the first "Star Wars" trilogy again. This time around Lando Calrissian and Emperor Palpatine are back. The ruins of the second Death Star show up. A new droid pal for BB-8 shows up. There' s more heavy breathing. More running. More lightsabers. Frankly, the whole thing feels like it's backtracking what "The Last Jedi" did to break away from formula. Sure, this is just marketing and Disney is just trying to put out images that are going to invite the most speculation, but it doesn't bode well. Personally, I am going to be very disappointed if Abrams walks back the revelation about Rey's parents in "The Last Jedi."
I'm actually more curious about "The Mandalorian," the Disney Plus series which is being handled by Jon Favreau and will star Pedro Pascal as the title character. I like that it takes place in the gap between "Return of the Jedi" and "The Force Awakens," and features no familiar characters whatsoever. And speaking of Disney Plus, a similar splashy kickoff event was used to promote the service at Disney's Investor Day event, which happened to take place the day before Celebration. This was a much more serious affair, however, presented by Disney CEO Bob Iger and attended mainly by Wall Street figures. However, its aim was also to drum up the hype, as Disney Plus will launch in November.
We can look forward to future events like this in the next few months - convention season is just around the corner. Disney will probably use San Diego Comic-Con and its own D23 Expo in August to make some more big announcements. 2020's two new Marvel movies technically haven't been officially announced yet. There are also two original PIXAR movies on next year's schedule, one of which we know absolutely nothing about. Now that the FOX merger has been completed, Disney can be a lot less hush-hush about its plans. Or maybe the new status quo is turning any announcement into a big hypable moment.
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