Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2...

There is really only one piece of news today with any sort of significance in my cultural universe.  What can I say by way asking forgiveness?

It's Star Wars.  There's the first trailer of the re-launched franchised.  And there is a new hope (sorry, couldn't resist it) that the whole prequel aberration is dead and buried.  The ghost of Gorge Lucas's lost vision may now be put to rest.  Thank you for Star Wars George and The Empire Strikes Back and everything in The Return Of The Jedi (except the Ewoks of course).  Thank you George for taking the $4.9 Billion from Disney then stepping out of the way.  (Can you take that in properly - $4.9 Billion??).

Since I had my first look at the YouTube clip above this morning another eight million people have viewed the trailer.  138,807 people - me included - have given the thumbs up to the trailer; 6,324 the thumbs down.  So that looks like the jury is in.  Let's hope the full movie lives up to all that hope.

I realise, of course, this is all mildly ridiculous for a grown - not to say old - man. It's a science fiction movie, a popcorn blockbuster, Cowboys and Indians in space.  But it's impossible - if your a movie-loving man of my generation - not to recall how much fun that first film was way back in 1977.  I think I can still remember the first time I watched that opening sequence - the text advancing towards the vanishing point, the burst of speed as the wee space ship broke our attention on the words then that seemingly never ending space cruiser / destroyer entering the frame like a giant lumbering lethal beast to fill the screen almost to the exclusion of everything else.  From that very first moment you just knew you were safely back in the territory of cheesy B-movies.  What fun it was, what fun. And that's what sci-fi B-movies ought to be, escapist fun.  Let's hope J J Abrams and his team get it right.