If there wasn’t enough to watch this weekend already — the final episode of “Girls,” the season premiere of “Veep,” the reboot of “MST3K,” something called “The Fate of the Furious” and, if you’re a New Yorker, the fantastic indies “The Lost City of Z” oh, and the opening of the renovated Quad movie theater — a suprise last minute entry snuck on the scene. But at least this time suck is only two minutes long. It’s the teaser for “The Last Jedi,” episode VIII of the “Star Wars” behemoth. Seems worthy of a tiny fraction of our attention.
When last we saw her, Daisy Ridley’s Rey had journeyed to the secret planet on which Mark Hamill’s grizzled-looking Luke Skywalker had been hiding out. The first minute of the teaser is mostly nature shots of the tiny island on which he dwells. Then, in true teaser fashion, there’s a flurry of random action: space fights, ships painting a desert surface red like graffiti artists, Adam Driver glowering behind his weird crimson lightsaber, OMFG Oscar Isaac with BB-8!! Then, Luke — we guess it’s Luke, because Hamill’s voice sounds like he smoked a billion cigarettes since 1983’s “Return of the Jedi” — says something cryptic about how “it’s time for the Jedi to end.” Whatever that means!
As skeptics — both in general and especially when it comes to blockbusters — trust us when we say we’re excited. With “The Force Awakens,” director J.J. Abrams tried to make an installment that looked and felt just like the original trilogy. The person at the helm this time is Rian Johnson, writer/director of “Brick,” “The Brothers Bloom” and “Looper” — three deeply eccentric greats. Word is the script he wrote is the weirdest “Star Wars” yet, and though the bar is low — “Rogue One” was more or less pure fanboy fanaticism — we’re expecting a comparatively loopy and original space romp, with a potentially grim, “The Empire Strikes Back”-y ending. We have, as Leia said in “The Force Awakens,” hope.
