Black Friday trailer: ‘There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?’

Hello! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. (And if you didn’t, I hope you’re now doing something that makes you happy today.)

I’m launching a new sub-newsletter for Popculturology today: Trailer Replay.

The main Popculturology newsletter will continue to publish twice a week with all the content you’re used to receiving in those editions. Trailer Replay will be a quick pop revisiting past movie trailers.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser

Released: Nov. 28, 2014

For the first edition of Trailer Replay, I’m replaying the original teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This one debuted on the day after Thanksgiving in 2014. While some people were out doing Black Friday shopping, some of us were watching this teaser over and over again.

It’s wild to think that there was a time when the Star Wars sequel trilogy was still mostly a hypothetical. New characters! New lightsabers! The Millennium Falcon flying again!

Lucasfilm originally planned on releasing this teaser in just thirty movie theaters, with the idea it would release online the following Monday. (The first weird promotional idea in a string of weird promotional ideas for Star Wars under Disney.) Thankfully the studio realized that’s not how you released movie trailers in the age of the Internet.

While a new Star Wars trailer is still a cool reveal, it’ll be hard to recapture the wow factor from seeing the first new footage from the franchise since Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith wrapped up the prequel trilogy a decade earlier.

Thanks for reading Popculturology: Trailer Replay. I love writing about pop culture, and I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter. If you do, please subscribe. It’s the easiest way to make sure you get every edition of Popculturology. And who doesn’t love an email that isn’t spam?