Next week, we’ll see the first Star Wars movie in over a decade, although you could be forgiven for thinking that Star Wars: The Force Awakens already opened and we’re already fans of it. Disney has gone all out to make the film’s release an inescapable force of nature. We know the names “Kylo Ren”, “Rey”, and “BB-8” as well as we do “Darth Vader”, “Luke Skywalker”, and “R2-D2” even though we haven’t seen the latest Star Wars movie, and in truth, don’t know much beyond a few superficial details regarding the new characters.

I understand the excitement. I understand there are people who don’t only want The Force Awakens to be good; they need it to be great. It has to make up for the prequels. It has to reach a new generation. It has to make Star Wars burn bright again. It’s crazy expectations for a film, and yet I look around and I wonder how many people will be capable of bringing any skepticism into the movie.

“It’s true.   All of it—the Dark Side, a Jedi—they’re real,” is a line Han Solo says in the final trailer for The Force Awakens. That’s the same Han Solo who said in A New Hope:

“I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.”

The Force Awakens ad campaign has basically said, “If the cynical Han Solo can be on board, then you have to be too. And if you don’t already believe in the magic that’s about to unfold, we shall pummel you with marketing until you do.”

And I want to believe that J.J. Abrams’ film will be terrific, and yet I have a few reasons for not believing in The Force Awakens with all my geeky heart and soul.

Trailers Aren’t Movies

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Image via Lucasfilm

Teaser culture conditions us to believe that trailers are events rather than the thing the trailer ostensibly exists to promote. As long as you were tuned into Monday Night Football to watch the premiere of the final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you were part of “the event”. And once that that event was over and the trailer was available online, you could relive the joy of that commercial again and again. And once just watching it had worn off, you could analyze it, remix it, recut it, or go through countless permutations to keep the magic alive.

Except trailers aren’t movies. You can’t engage with a trailer like you can with a film, and you certainly couldn’t engage with this any of the three big trailers for The Force Awakens, which made sure that the details of the plot and the characters would be vague. But those details were unimportant because it was selling you on a feeling, and the feeling was “Don’t you love Star Wars? Don’t you want to go back to that world? Take our hand (there is literally a shot of characters taking each other’s hands in these trailers) and we’ll take you on a new adventure that will get you back to the Star Wars you love. Trust us.”

The trailers are reinforcing a desire you already have rather than creating something unexpected. Abrams and his crew can spin it as trying to keep the mystery of cinema alive, but we know the logline of Star Wars: Rogue One. Is the mystery of that movie dead to you? Are you no longer interested in seeing it? Of course not because it’s Star Wars, and if you care enough to watch the trailer a few dozen times, you’ll gladly cough up the money to see the movies until you have no faith in the films.

And thankfully for Disney, enough time has passed since the prequels that the stench they cast over the franchise has largely wafted away.

The Lesson of the Prequels

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Image via Disney

While the ads may play on nostalgia for the original trilogy, make no mistake that these movies are made for a new generation of fans, and that generation may have no attachment to any Star Wars, or their attachment to the prequels may be tenuous at best.

The years between 2005 and 2015 have been an odd wilderness for the franchise. George Lucas lost the good will of the original fans (he doesn’t seem to care much about that, and good for him because it’s not like he needs it), and while Star Wars products continued to sell unabated, it’s hard to tell who held the torch for the franchise. People who grew up with the original trilogy didn’t like the prequels, and the prequels—while ostensibly aimed at “kids”—are movies that deal with trade regulations, stone-faced romance, and killing swaths of children. Star Wars became more brand than story.

The brand is what Disney wants above all else, but the brand requires new stories to stay potent, and the prequels weren’t going to do the trick. Enter the sequel trilogy and the spinoffs, and there will never be a shortage of new Star Wars toys, bedsheets, mugs, shampoos, etc. again. That’s not to mention the ancillary revenues created by the theme parks, international markets, and so forth. Disney paid a lot of money for Lucasfilm, but they’ll get it back easily as long as people continue to care about Star Wars.

But why do they care about Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Because this is the real “new hope” for the franchise. It’s the hope for fans that a continuation of a story that began in 1977 can be good again, and it’s a hope for the studio that they can win new fans.

Someone who was five when Revenge of the Sith came out would be a teenager now, and Disney desperately wants these people to love The Force Awakens because they’re the ones who will need to be on board for the sequels and the spinoffs. These people weren’t burned by the prequels because they weren’t part of the build up. They don’t know how fever pitch can give way to crushing disappointment. They never went through the experience of trying to convince yourself that the film isn’t all that bad when deep down you know the truth. They weren’t among these people. [link to 1999 phantom menace video]

I’ve been on this ride before. Hopefully, The Force Awakens isn’t a Phantom Menace-sized disappointment (I don’t think it will be), but Star Wars and the people behind it should earn our trust rather than just assume we’ll blindly love anything just because it comes with the promise of a new lightsaber.

When Did We Fall in with Love J.J. Abrams?

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Image via Lucasfilm

J.J. Abrams is a good face for the franchise. He sells himself as a fan first, and since we like ourselves, we like him. He’s affable, he says the right things, and even his obsession with keeping things a mystery isn’t a cardinal sin. It’s like one of those weaknesses you put on a job application: “I just care too much.”

But is he a great filmmaker? If you were to make a list of your five favorite directors, would he be on it? Would he make the top ten? The top fifteen?

Abrams is a shooter, and his best film, 2009’s Star Trek, is a triumph of direction over crummy story. The one film that’s been completely his—Super 8—is all tone and surprisingly little soul for a movie that’s trying so hard to ape Amblin movies. Abrams likes living in other people’s worlds, which is fine, but it also makes things unsurprising. He knows how to make a movie fun, but he doesn’t know how to make it substantive at the same time. You’re being fed an imitation.

And that’s fine until that imitation can’t support an atrocious story. Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek are fleet-footed, playful films that hit escape velocity on their weak plots. Super 8 barely manages to pull through until the ending smashes it back to earth. And Star Trek Into Darkness had everyone apologizing before the credits even finished rolling. As for his TV series—Felicity and Alias—are these the touchstone TV shows we love? They’ve done more for Abrams than they have for any audience, and that’s fine. His shows and movies are resoundingly fine.

But shouldn’t we demand more than “fine” from the director and co-writer of a new Star Wars movie? If we give him the benefit of the doubt, then he’s the fan who gets to make the thrilling movie he’s been waiting to make his entire life. He’s living the dream, and you can see that dream coming to life in the trailers. The film looks frenetic but unmistakably Star Wars.

So perhaps Abrams isn’t just a journeyman director. He’s an artist, and he will speak to your poor, afflicted Star Wars soul. That’s what we hope he will be even if his track record is far spottier. Our desire to have The Force Awakens fill the Star Wars-shaped hole in our hearts is enough to overlook any criticisms of his filmography.

You’re Being Given What You Already Adore

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Image via Lucasfilm

Here’s the major problem with franchise filmmaking: it shuts the door on the new. There’s no room for the next Star Wars; there’s only room for another Star Wars. And people have decided to go crazy for another rather than the new.

I understand the reasoning, and it makes sense that you want to support more of the thing you love rather than take a chance on the unknown. Assume there’s an alternate universe where Warner Bros. churns out as much Jupiter Ascending merchandise four months before that film’s release, and even if the film had looked good, would you buy it? You may not know much about Kylo Ren, but he’s got a nifty lightsaber. He kind of reminds you of Darth Vader. That’s good enough to buy this toy.

When was the last time you got really excited about a blockbuster franchise you didn’t know anything about? Part of the reason people flocked to Guardians of the Galaxy was because it was so unusual (even though it’s not that weird of a movie, and we’re pretty tame for ever thinking otherwise), but it was considered risky because of a talking raccoon and his tree buddy. Why are we excited for The Force Awakens if it’s just offering a warm blanket? Shouldn’t we be pushed from our comfort zone just a bit?

That’s my greatest concern for The Force Awakens: that it will swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, and people will eat it up. The lesson of the prequels shouldn’t have been “Don’t do anything different.” It should have been, “Tell the best story possible.” I’m afraid that The Force Awakens is a rehash of what we’ve seen before, and the original Star Wars movie didn’t comfort people. It excited them.

We’ve all bought into The Force Awakens. I have tickets for opening night in addition to my press screening. I desperately want the movie to be good. Star Wars is a singular universe, and I want to see how talented people can play in it. But there’s nothing wrong with withholding judgment until the closing credits roll. If you’re already convinced that The Force Awakens is the savior of the franchise, you’ve bought into a lot of tricks and nonsense.