Before Star Wars became a cultural landmark, George Lucas had to sell his audience on “a spectacle light-years ahead of its time.” The official Star Wars YouTube account has uploaded the two-minute 1976 teaser trailer for A New Hope, which sells the film as “the story of a boy, a girl, and a universe.” The trailer lays out just about every iconic scene in the movie, albeit in short cuts that are heavy on Leia and extremely light on Han Solo, and it plays up a romantic tension that would become significantly more awkward by the end of The Empire Strikes Back. It’s not necessarily plausible to read anything into the release of an old trailer, but as Disney gears up to release a new film in 2015, it’s hard not to do so.
See the original ‘Star Wars’ teaser trailer from 1976
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
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