star wars episode 7

Trailers are a huge part of the fabric of movies. They play before every film shown in theaters, and on every movie website around the world. They’re commercials, obviously, but they’re also more than that; miniature works of art that utilize the core elements of cinema—image, sound, music, action, editing—at their most pure and refined. And today at ScreenCrush we’re celebrating movie trailers by saluting the best sneak previews of 2014.

It seems as though J.J. Abrams may have taken a note from Joss Whedon and ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ when casting Andy Serkis in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ It was confirmed over the weekend that Serkis is indeed the voice narrating the first trailer for the new ‘Star Wars’ film and that he’ll be playing a live-action role in the film—but if a new report is to believed, Abrams may have ordered the ‘Avengers 2' Serkis Special: that’s one Andy Serkis live-action performance along with a generous portion of Serkis’ exceedingly talented motion-capture work on the side.

The ‘Star Wars: Episode 7’ trailer just premiered online last week, but if you’re already starved for new footage (and, who could blame you after that teaser), we’ve got word on when you can see the next ‘Star Wars’ trailer. The bad news is you’re going to have to wait a while. The good news is, you were going to see ‘Avengers 2’ anyway, so now you have the added bonus of seeing a new ‘Star Wars: Episode 7' trailer before Iron Man and Captain America start punching on some evil robots.

We never did get a ‘Spaceballs’ sequel, but now we have something almost as good: A ‘Spaceballs’ parody trailer of the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ teaser.

Much was made about how the ‘Avengers 2' trailer broke online viewing records for 2014, shattering the previous record by ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. But, records were made to be broken and it took just over a month for the ‘Avengers 2’ trailer to be surpassed, not surprisingly by the ‘Star Wars: Episode 7’ trailer, which, if it keeps up at its current pace, could set the all-time record for trailer views.

The 'Star Wars: Episode 7' trailer may only be 88 seconds long, but you're going to spend the rest of your day watching this over and over again.

There have been a lot of reports regarding the trailer for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ Just last week, news surfaced that Disney planned to attach the first teaser trailer to screenings of ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,’ which seemed to confirm an earlier rumor, while Disney reps said they had “bigger plans” for their official debut. And now another report has surfaced, claiming that we’ll see the first teaser in theaters as soon as this coming Thanksgiving week. Madness!

The ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer is coming soon. Very soon. This much we know. The footage is edited and, according to reports, composer John Williams recorded the new music for the trailer this weekend. But, what we all want to know, is what the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer will look like. And, now we have a pretty good idea.

We thought that the 'Star Wars: Episode 7' title might get officially announced this past summer at Comic-Con, but that event came and went with no official reveal. So, what better way to announce the new title than a random Thursday in November? Just this morning on Twitter, Lucasfilm and the official 'Star Wars' Twitter account revealed the 'Star Wars: Episode 7' title: 'A Force Awakens'.

'Star Wars: Episode 7' may not hit theaters for a little over another year, but production has already wrapped on the project. It'll still be a long road of editing and post-production, and it may be hard to believe that they're already done filming, but we have the evidence in the form of a special note that director J.J. Abrams and the producers sent out to the cast and crew, and you can read it for yourself.