There is a lot to digest in this trailer. Palpatine is one of those. How will he come back. He seems to be of such big importance that his presence in the movie is not a secret. Ian is listed on IMDB as Palpatine. The question is if he is back in spirit, back in body, or back in hologram. The thing that is not a question to me is why he is back. There has been nothing about Snoke that has been a threat. He was the supreme leader of the First Order, but how he came to be that and all sorts of things about his past were left hidden. I would not be surprised if Palpatine is back in body and we find that he was controlling Snoke from behind the scenes. Palpatine’s contingency plan that has evidently cropped up in so many of the new books is a strong hint that Palpatine was coming back. While they aren’t part of the movies, they completely explain the rise of the First Order. It also fulfills Abrams promise to make this a proper close to the Saga. Palpatine was the bad guy of the previous two trilogies and the entire saga coming back to him only makes sense.
I’m far more interested in the identity of the desert planet. I see 4 possiblities. It is Tatooine (too obvious, but possible). It is Jakku (appropriate for the trilogy as both other trilogies have revisited the first planet in a later movie). It is Jedha. This is my favorite - the one I’m hoping for as that world has ties to the Jedi and the Force and would tie in the importance of that film. It is my leading contender because of the natives and the vegetation (Tatooine had so little except at the Lars homestead and Jakku had nothing). But we fall into a trap that the environments we have seen on planets is the entire planet is the same. That may be true for Tatooine, Hoth, and Jakku, but there is no reason to believe that is true for any other planet as it isn’t the case for our own. The last possibility is that it is new planet.
The mountainous terrain at night seems to be a new planet. Someone thought they saw Cloud City in one clip. The red forest is probably a new planet. The planet with the pieces of the Death Star would be Yavin IV or the moon of Endor. Either one has possibilities though from the shape of the weapon dish, I believe it is the first Death Star. And it would be like Abrams to take us back to the beginning for the ending.
As for what the story is, there was no clue that I could detect. A few action scenes and a few scenes that show things happening, but nothing to string together.
I am very interested. I think I sense a big saga level ending in the works. If he can pull this off, I will take back a lot of the negative comments I’ve made about Abrams.