Well, the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer has just been released (and no, for better or worse, it’s not a RickRoll this time).
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here ya go:
Obviously, everyone here at the office is really jazzed about this two-minute teaser. Unfortunately, we write for an automotive news site, so it’s pretty difficult for us to justify spending a lot of time obsessively analyzing some sci-fi movie preview, when we should be busy writing real car news.
Unless, of course, we approach it from a distinctly automotive angle…
So here, without further ado, is our meticulous break-down of how many Kia automobiles appear in the new Star Wars trailer.
The teaser trailer opens on a desert landscape, perhaps Tatooine, where we see a crashed X-wing starfighter in the foreground, and a beached Imperial I-class Star Destroyer in the background. Neither of those two futuristic aircrafts are manufactured by the South Korean automaker Kia (or its parent company, Hyundai).
But what about that unidentifiable vehicle (circled) speeding along on the horizon? Could it possibly be a new 2016 Kia Optima?
Our best educated guess: probably not. Director J.J. Abrams has said he wants to remain true to the original trilogy, which famously did not feature any Optimas.
Related info: Blake Grifin Rides a 274 Horsepower Optima in Old West Ad
Is this character being handed the keys to a new Soul EV? Nope, that’s a lightsaber
Next we hear the voice of an aging Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hammil), who intones, “The force is strong in my family… My father has it…I have it… my sister has it… you have that power, too.”
We never see who Luke is talking to in this scene, but some die-hard fans have suggested that the “you” being referred to is Kia Motors America COO Michael Sprague. It would be a timely reference—Sprague was promoted to the newly created role of COO just last week, ousting group vice chairman Byung Mo Ahn, 64, in much the same way that Darth Vader (née Anakin Skywalker) ousted Emperor Sheev Palpatine, 64, when he threw him into the Death Star’s reactor shaft.
However, it should be noted that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was filmed from May to September of 2014—too early to sneak in a sly Michael Sprague reference (unless, of course, they added it in post-production).
Perhaps the biggest crowd-pleasing moment in the entire trailer comes at the end, when Han Solo (Harrison Ford) turns to his longtime companion Chewbacca and says, “Chewy, we’re home!”
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where they are in this scene. All that we can say for sure is that they are inside something with a lot of headroom (Chewbacca is noticeably tall). Could they possibly be inside the famously spacious interior of a Kia K900 luxury sedan?
In a word, no. The “we’re home” line is probably a reference to Han Solo’s iconic Millennium Falcon, which appeared in the original trilogy.
Related info: Kia K900 Wins Decisive Magazine’s Urban Car of the Year Award
So, to answer the question on everyone’s lips: no, there aren’t any Kias in the new Star Wars trailer. That’s not to say that there aren’t going to be any Kias in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we’re just saying that this specific preview doesn’t feature any.
We’d be more than willing to subject the next trailer to the same rigorous analysis, though…
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