When the Star Wars VII teaser trailer came out on Black Friday, I was pumped. I watched it a bunch of times. In the weeks since then, people have been coming out of the woodwork with variations/spoofs on the original. Frankly, I wanted to organize a list of my top 5 for myself and figured you might like it to. Here we go.
The original:
Ughhh! So good! Okay, now that I’ve watched that several more times… it’s onto the variations (in order of my preference).
1) The Retro Cut
I’ll be honest with you. This one is special to me. I love it. I think they’ve gone through a lot of care to reduce the quality to an Original Trilogy standard that is nostalgic to me. This one is my favorite.
2) The George Lucas Special Edition
This one cracks me up. Not only is it very well done, but I still remember being enamored with all the extra stuff in the Special Editions at first. It was my first time seeing movies I loved in the theater, so it was a bit of a moment for me… until Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi… When they removed most of the Ewok celebration… “I felt a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced… I feel something terrible has happened.”
3) If Wes Anderson Directed…
I used to be big on Wes Anderson movies. When I was in film school, Bottle Rocket was one of my favorites. This is great.
4) The Lego Edition
At this moment in time, there are a number of other Lego versions, but this one was the first I saw, and it’s still the only one I’ve seen that uses practical effects. That said, it’s not the best one, hence it’s down at #4. But, I have to give this user credit because this came out the very next day. And that’s just impressive. For the sake of argument, here’s a better one, and another that’s pretty good.
5) Crazy Lens Flare Edition
There were a few runners up for the fifth place, but none of them were quite as elegant and nuanced as this one. Many of them were Michael Bay spoofs where people had just thrown explosion gifs on top and called it a thing. But this… This is something pretty special. J.J. Abrams is known for some pretty good movies… and lens flare. John Woo has doves, this guy has lens flare. There’s nothing really shiny in the Star Wars universe (at least not in the Original Trilogy), so we’ll see how that pans out.
There you have it! My top 5 Star Wars VII trailer variations. The internet is an amazing place full of talented people who apparently have more time than I do… and it’s hilarious. Thank you.
Have you seen one you think deserves a place on the list? Let me know in the comments!
