When Rian Johnson said that it might be an idea to avoid The Last Jedi's new trailer if you want to avoid spoilers, friends, he wasn't kidding.
There's a huge amount of information given away in the trailer and, really, if you want to come into The Last Jedi clean, don't watch it and - better yet - don't read this article because we're going to be deep-diving into this thing.
Let's begin with that opening shot.
That's a beautiful shot, to be honest. But what does it tell us? For one, the First Order has become way more powerful and mechanised than when we last saw them. More to the point, Kylo Ren seems to be more alone than ever now since he straight-up murdered his father, Han Solo.
That's the AT-M6, which is the replacement for the AT-AT from The Empire Strikes Back. The M6 stands for MegaCaliber6, which is the giant cannon strapped to the back of their hull. The legs on them are designed to root it in place when it fires off the cannon, so our guess is you're going to see some huge explosions with them.
Look familiar? That's because it's more or less a copy of the Jedi Temple scene in Revenge Of The Sith, which was itself copied from The Battleship Potemkin. Basically, any time you see people marching in a line with guns, just say that it's from The Battleship Potemkin and it'll make you look and sound very smart.
Call this a whacky theory, but the dialogue Snoke is speaking here about "raw, untamed power" and so on isn't about Kylo Ren. It's actually about...
Yes, Rey. Why? Probably because of what happens later in the trailer, to be honest.
Just to give you an idea where the film starts off, it's literally seconds after The Force Awakens. What's his first line going to be? "GET OFF MY LAWN!" No, probably not.
This must be the entrance to the first Jedi Temple, but it also a certain similarity to the Magic Tree from The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke saw Darth Vader and eventually himself. Man, they really are going for the visual parallels.
What's so fascinating about Luke's character and what we're seeing here is that he looks genuinely terrified. It's pretty obvious he has some sort of PTSD, enough to leave everyone behind and hide away. Someone made the point that you can't really think of these characters as the same, primarily because it's been thirty years and who really is the same person after all that time? That symbol on the ground, incidentally, looks totally new and never-before-seen. It certainly doesn't look the Jedi Order symbol, anyway.
The no-flashbacks rule looks like it's going to be either broken or strongly bent, as this is the moment Luke's revitalsied Jedi Temple was destroyed by Kylo Ren and his band of not-very-merry men. The whole thing of Skywalker being frightened by Rey's power leads us to think that she's eventually going to leave Ahch-To, where Skywalker is hiding, and join Kylo and Snoke. In fact, the next scene seems to suggest that Kylo is being supplanted by Rey.
This looks like it's later in the film, as the scar on his face has healed and he's on a First Order ship. The fact that he smashes his helmet apart is pretty interesting, as it was separated him from himself. We know already he has a thing with his temper flying off the handle, so it's really a question of why he's so angry. Most likely? Rey bested him in front of Snoke, or something to that effect.
Kylo's scar definitely indicates a passage of time throughout the film, so the scar fully healed means it's later in the film and the scar with the patch over it means it's earlier. Also, check out Kylo's Ren starfighter - the TIE Silencer. Nice little homage to Darth Vader's TIE Advanced X-1.
Don't be in the least bit surprised if it turns out that Kylo Ren destroys General Leia's capital ship without realising it, or something along those lines. The fact that the dialogue here is "Let the past die, kill it if you have to...", is very reminiscent of the scene with Han Solo says a whole lot. Not only that, there's also the fact that the character of General Leia has to be written out of the series as Carrie Fisher is, sadly, no longer with us.
Remember the red dust we saw in the first teaser? This is the same planet, and it's called Crait. According to Rian Johnson, it's a remote mining planet that's hugely important to the overall story. Our guess? It's got something to do with kyber crystals, the energy source for both lightsabers and the Death Star's planet-destroying cannon. Kyber crystals and mining were mentioned in Rogue One, so it's possible that there's a connection here.
Porgs are going to be E V E R Y W H E R E when this film comes out. Just look how adorable they are, like. And the funny thing is they're passed on the puffins in Skellig Michael.
Intergalactic sex symbol Poe Dameron here talking about sparks and smouldering and I'm sorry, I got lost in his eyes.
Finally, it seems, Captain Phasma is going to have something to do other than look cool in chrome Stormtrooper armour. You also see Finn there with the baton thing from the first one, and it looks like he's wearing the uniform of a First Order officer. Has he gone back to them or is he infiltrating them? Either way, it looks like the whole stealth and secrecy thing's gone out the window pretty quickly.
"This is not going to go the way you think!" It's hard to know if all the imagery - Kylo Ren killing General Leia, Rey joining Snoke and the like, Finn in an First Order uniform - is actually how's it going to go down or if it's just some sort of double-bluff. As in, it makes you think it's going to go one way, but it's actually totally different. As we previously reported, Rian Johnson's been pretty open about how this trailer gives a lot away, so maybe it actually is how it plays out.
Is that some sort of crystal dog? 14 / 10, would pet but only if crystals didn't cut our hands.
That shot looks a lot like the one from Return of the Jedi when Skywalker walks into Jabba's palace. Going by the colour of the sky and the ground, it looks like it's Crait again. If you're keeping the score at home, that's basically a metric shit-ton of scenes set on Crait.
Snoke is obviously going to play a much more significant role in this than he did in The Force Awakens. That's definitely him in front of Rey, doing the whole levitation-torture thing, and our guess is she's gone to him either out of frustration with Luke not being able to train her properly or help her find her way in the galaxy.
"I need someone to show me my place in all this..." And then the shot of Kylo's hand outstretched, not unlike Darth Vader to Luke at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. The Force Awakens had a load of visual symmetry with A New Hope, and a lot of it was inverted - so it stands to reason that it's the same thing here with The Last Jedi. So does that mean that Rey joins the First Order when Luke didn't in The Empire Strikes Back? It's possible, sure. But is it too obvious? Is the trailer just leading us all down the garden path? It's hard to say, really. Also, look at Kylo Ren's scar - that means this scene takes place towards the end of the film, so it could be leading into Episode IX that Rey's turned evil and Kylo's trying to turn good.