Why I’m Not Watching the Trailer for The Last Jedi

I was nine years old when Star Wars came out — the movie we now refer to as Episode IV in the series: A New Hope. At 9, living in Pueblo, Colo., I was smack-dab in the middle of the target market for a a science-fiction-meets-cowboy-western movie. I can vividly recall coming home from the first time I saw Star Wars and rigging up some blankets to function like the twin guns on the Millennium Falcon so I could recreate the escape-from-the-Death-Star scene.

Earlier today, a trailer for The Last Jedi — Episode VIII in the Star Wars saga — dropped on the interwebs (I saw a post on Twitter promoting it). And I am ignoring it. And all of the other trailers, speculative articles, blog posts, etc. I am going to put my hands over my eyes and run out of the room humming if a trailer for The Last Jedi shows up as a TV commercial in a show or sports event I am watching.

Why?

Because I want to go in to see The Last Jedi cold. It’s better that way.

As soon as Disney and Lucasfilm became one and the same and the announcement was made that new Star Wars movies would be produced, I gobbled up every tidbit I could find. I eagerly anticipated the release of the trailers for The Force Awakens and watched them many times trying to pick up clues as to who, what, when, where, etc.

But then I found myself sitting in the theater watching for all of the things I thought I would see, or had read that I would see, and I missed that feeling of diving headlong into the movie not knowing where it would take me.

So, last year, I tried something different. [I have to admit, I think I may have read or heard about this idea online, so I cop to it not being an original thought.] Anyway, I decided that for Rogue One I would try to go in cold turkey, and I was pretty successful at it. All I knew going in was that the story was set between Episodes III and IV, and that it might involve Rogue Squardron. I did accidentally see a few seconds of a trailer during a football game that showed an X-wing pilot climbing down from his ship (that turned out to be Poe Dameron), but that didn’t give very much away.

My strategy worked! I truly enjoyed Rogue One — I rank it third of the seven movies behind The Empire Strikes Back ( “Luke, I am your father!” will never be topped — unless JarJar is revealed to be Snoke)  and A New Hope. The best part was not knowing what to expect — I was a little bit giddy when Vader showed up with a base on Mustafar.

Thus,  I am employing the same strategy for The Last Jedi. No trailers, no blog posts, no info of any kind. If my mind starts to wander in the shower speculating about what might happen next between Luke and Rey, then I am going to think about baseball instead.

I have just eight months to go…wish me luck!