Star Wars releases new movie trailer

The highly anticipated trailer for the seventh installment of the Star Wars blockbuster was screened Friday to film audiences throughout the United States.

The trailer, which is 90 seconds in length, is a teaser for the upcoming movie Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, slated for release in December 2015.

Directed by American (Jewish) filmmaker J.J. Abrams (born Jeffery Jacob Abrams), the film is due to take place approximately 30 years after the death of Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.

The trailer, which garnered millions of YouTube views in a mere number of hours after it was released online, depicts highly-detailed computer generated images of stormtroopers, foot soldiers of the fictitious Galactic Empire, and various spacecraft, including the revamped Millennium Falcon and X-Wing fighters, engaging in elaborate aerobatic displays.

The film is the first of a third trilogy installment. Episodes seven through nine will be the first movies released by the Walt Disney corporation after George Lucas, the director behind the Star Wars movie empire, sold his production company, Lucasfilm, to Disney in 2012 for just over $4 billion.

As opposed to the second trilogy installment of the late 1990s and 2000s which served as a prequel for the original Star Wars movies of the ’70s and ’80s, episodes seven through nine will pick up after the original installment left off and introduce Star Wars fans to a host of new characters and story lines.

Abrams, who has achieved a great deal of critical acclaim with the television show Lost, and several films in the Mission Impossible and Star Trek series, is a Los Angeles native and, at 48-years-old, has been a titan of the film industry for years.

Abrams was raised in a family with deep ties in Hollywood: he is the son of television producer Gerald W. Abrams and the late executive producer Carol Ann Abrams. His sister, Tracy Rosen, is a screenwriter.