Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer: Five Things We're Glad We Didn't See

Bear in mind, we're just having a little fun here.We've already talked about what we wished we'd [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Bear in mind, we're just having a little fun here.

We've already talked about what we wished we'd seen in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer.

In the spirit of a number of parody videos starting to spring up online, though, including one just released from Cinema Sins and another that purports to be "George Lucas' cut" of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser, we thought we'd counterpoint our list of things that we wished we'd seen in the trailer with five things we're really, really glad we didn't see.

Jar Jar Binks

It's likely that, more or less across the board, nothing made fans more happy than seeing that this movie was 100% Gungan free. The fact that Lucas really did seem to cut back on Jar Jar and friends as the prequel trilogy went on didn't change the fact that anytime the character appeared onscreen it just renewed people's rage.

Of course, they didn't reintroduce fans to any of the old characters, so presumably he could always show up later...!

Jaxxon

Sure, it could be interesting to see him on the big screen, but...no.

When Marvel and Disney jumped into bed together on the Star Wars property, nobody was sure just what would come out of it. Certainly new comics that built off the old ones seem to be off the table (and I'm not even clear on whether Marvel's new comics will be canonical to the movies) but the worst-case scenario might be bringing some of the crazier, weirder and dumber old Marvel concepts into the movies.

Podracing

With so much time seemingly spent on Tattooine in the teaser, they seemed to try and break some new-ish ground by not explicitly showing us familiar sights and sounds...and thank God we didn't have any indication of podracing in the trailer.

Besides the negative associations with the distraction that went on way too long in Episode I, podracing is emblematic of something that seems to be largely missing from the new film: entirely digital environments and effects with no sign of practical effects anywhere. And you can really tell when they do that.

They seem to love that sport on Tattooine, which is fine. Just...keep it there.

Cameos

Unnecessary cameo appearances seem somewhat inevitable in this film; a number of Star Wars superfans like Kevin Smith and Simon Pegg have visited the set, and director J.J. Abrams has never been particularly shy about such things in the past, with R2-D2 appearing in both of his Star Trek films.

And that's fine in the cantina or something...but seeing Kevin Smith in X-wing or Simon Pegg made up like an alien would have seriously distracted from the epic nature and serious tone of the trailer.

The Five Things We Wish We Saw

One of our commenters said it best: the film is a year away, and if the teaser trailer gave us everything we wanted, it would be a long slog through a solid year of trying to promote a movie that blew its wad on its first teaser trailer.

So, yeah, there are some things that we wish we'd seen in the trailer...but on the other hand, we're glad that we didn't, as it gives us something to look forward to next time around.

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