Six of the most beautiful (and thought provoking) shots from The Rise of Skywalker sizzle reel

I arrived home from work on Monday afternoon to find that Dark Rey, C-3PO, Palpatine and Kylo were all trending on Twitter. Turns out that D23’s The Rise of Skywalker sizzle reel had sent social media into a frenzy and quite rightly so.

It’s a damn near perfect tease for the movie, reminding us of how we’ve arrived at Episode 9 with a look back at the previous Skywalker Saga films that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, before slapping you with around 30 seconds of beautiful brand new footage that is stacked with intrigue.

Here are my six favourite shots from that special look at The Rise of Skywalker.

Squad goals

With the sequel trilogy up to the end of The Last Jedi only playing out over the space of a few days, The Rise of Skywalker will be the first time that we see our new gang of heroes working alongside each other as one group. JJ Abrams has already noted that this time, they’ll adventure as a team and in the trailer we get a great shot of the squad together on the new planet Pasaana.

Small details here add to the intrigue of the shot. Rey gives us our best look yet at her reforged Skywalker lightsaber – repaired after it was split in two in TLJ.

In the background, we can also see the back of the Millennium Falcon, which is presumably the ship in which our heroes have travelled to the latest desert planet.

Nice to see old and new friends, which reminds me…

You’ve gotta be shippin’ me – B-Wings?!

Lucasfilm could serve me a two hour movie of nothing but ships emerging from hyperspace, and I’d be happy – especially when the ships emerging from hyperspace are as interesting and diverse as those forming the Resistance fleet in this trailer.

We’ve got X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings and even B-Wings along with what looks like the Tantive IV at the front of the shot and a mysterious ship to the right as we look.

The presence of B-Wings in particular is intriguing, given that the Resistance opted to use the new class of bomber – the MG-100 StarFortress SF-17s – in the battle against Captain Canady’s Dreadnought at the start of TLJ. By this point in the timeline, B-Wings are usually used by civilian starship racers so to see them part of the Resistance fleet here suggests that General Leia might have nipped to an old Rebel Alliance yard sale at some point.

I suppose some replacements were required, given that the entire SF-17 fleet was destroyed during the battle of D’Qar.

Meanwhile, the opposition seem to have pulled the same trick. Those are not First Order Star Destroyers – they look like the Imperial design, forming one hell of a blockade.

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Oh blast

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Well, this looks ominous. Reminiscent of the solar powered weapon used to destroy Hosnian Prime in The Force Awakens, the villains of the piece are clearly looking to do some serious damage with this power play. This could be the work of a Dreadnought auto-cannon.

To be honest, I’m glad to say I have no idea who is firing on what and for what reason, but the image was simply too stunning not to include in the list. It’s a sign of the high stakes in what is a film to conclude the greatest saga of all time.

Mask ado about nothing

Much was made of the fact that Kylo Ren was to repair his mask in Episode 9. In the first teaser, we see him stitching together the black helmet he destroyed after Snoke told him that he was nothing more than “a child in a mask.”

We all thought, ‘well, someone’s not ready to let the past die after all’. However, footage in the first teaser of him fighting without the mask has been followed up by several shots in this trailer of him stalking around without his headwear.

In fact, outside of the poster revealed at D23, we’ve not seen any footage so far of Kylo wearing his mask. What if he doesn’t repair it until the final act of the movie?

What the above shot also confirms is that the ship which surges towards Rey in April’s teaser trailer is Kylo’s ship. That was the assumption of many, but this sizzle reel effectively closes the book on that debate.

Striking up his lightsaber in a typically angry fashion here, the big question is, where is he going?

Theorists at the Rey-dy…

Just as The Rise of Skywalker is being billed as a fitting crescendo for the Skywalker saga, this trailer ended on a high note – an internet breaking high note.

Rey, the hero of the past two movies and potentially one of the strongest force users we’ve seen in a galaxy far, far away, wields a double bladed red lightsaber while wearing dark robes and displaying the pale skin and death stare vibe that all top siths learn to perfect.

The lightsaber invokes both a reminder of the bad-assery of Darth Maul and the four-armed General Pong Krell’s collapsible saber design. There’s your callback ‘Prequelists,’ and an awesome one it is.

As much as I would be intrigued to see a darkside Rey play a pivotal role in the plot, I am sure that this is simply a vision and for a number of reasons.

First off, from a film-making perspective, I don’t see how you could have Rey turn to the darkside and tie up every other loose end to complete the sequel trilogy and saga in just one movie. Unless the film is a five hour epic, it’s not possible to do that story justice.

There is precedent for our heroes to experience dark side visions. Just ask Luke Skywalker about when he encountered Darth Vader in a suspicious looking cave on Dagobah. This could be Rey – or in fact Kylo – seeing what would have happened if she had joined him after vanquishing Snoke in TLJ.

Plus, this is JJ Abrams – King of the Mystery Box. The filmmaker who convinced the world that Finn would be the one to wield the hero’s blade and be our central protagonist in TFA, only to have the Skywalker saber rocket into Rey’s hand on Starkiller Base. If Rey was about to change allegiances, Abrams would be guarding that secret like an M. Night Shyamalan twist.

Regardless of what it is and what implications a red lightsaber-wielding Rey will have on the final chapter of the story, what is certain is that this shot put the sizzle in sizzle reel.