Oh, I’m planning on seeing it. I saw the prequels in theaters too, though by Episode III my friend Jon and I were laughing at very inappropriate moments. (If you were to watch our parody film from 2004, Star Wars Episode √2: The Great Disturbance, you’d realize why we found the scene where Artoo takes out two battle droids to be frickin’ hilarious. Let’s just say . . . we called it.)

But the track record of the prequel movies isn’t what makes me less than eager to see Star Wars. Nor is it the dread that someone is messing with my childhood nooooo or somesuch. I don’t mind remakes most of the time. Good stories deserve to be told again. Remakes aren’t so much a sign of unoriginal thinking as they are a recognition that the original stuff is valuable. That originality, to paraphrase Chesterton, is about returning to original things that always remain fresh, because they have a quality of eternity.

Sadly, as we all know, Lucas never saw his greatest triumph to be eternal. He kept wanting to mess with it. Some of the updated stuff is fine; others you wonder what he was smoking; and others you get upset at because they removed something you loved.

That last bit is why I’m not excited. When Timothy Zahn wrote The Thrawn Trilogy in the 90s, Lucas made a promise that the Expanded Universe would be canon. Over time, fans came to understand that certain things were more canon than others (we won’t talk about The Crystal Star), but we relished the idea that everything was there. That we were witnessing and enjoying the true Star Wars.

Then The New Jedi Order came along, and I stopped reading. It didn’t feel the same anymore. The writers were going out of their way to shake things up — too much, for too little gain, in the face of too little justification. And no, I’m not talking about Chewbacca dying. I actually didn’t mind that so much . . . when it was the only thing truly being change. Instead, it started a cascade, as if the moon that took out our beloved Chewie also took out a lot of other stuff we held so dear.

So, when we got the announcement that the new movies wouldn’t follow the Expanded Universe, well . . . I promptly lost interest. The prequels had already messed a bunch of things up, ignoring stuff from the EU; but they were mostly minor details that only the diehard fans would instantly realize, much less find bothersome. That was bad enough, but to completely ignore everything? Sorry. You lost me. Yes, I know it’s no longer Lucas’ baby, so he has no control over that promise, but I still feel betrayed.

But . . .

Okay, I . . . admit that . . . the new teaser trailer might have something going for it.

You have no idea how hard it is to admit that. I don’t want to like the new movies.

There are two things in there. The first is that crashed Star Destroyer. I look at that and immediately start wondering about the story potential. There’s so much there that could work. How long has it been there? Why was a battle fought over Tatooine, which holds no strategic importance? Or is it another planet, and they’re abandoning the Star Wars bad habit of uniform planets? Have Jawas stripped it bare, and is it now used as a strangely-arranged makeshift town by the locals? (Edit: Apparently it’s a new planet named Jakku. Thanks, Elizabeth.)

That tugs at my writer’s instincts. The second tugs at the heartstrings. It makes the fanboy in me — the little twelve-year-old kid reading Heirs to the Empire and realizing that the story wasn’t over — remember everything I loved about Star Wars.

“Chewie . . . we’re home.”

Everything else, I don’t care about. Melted Vader helmet? Meh. Who’s Luke talking to? Not really curious. Old Harrison Ford standing there next to Chewbacca and talking about being home? I’m all over that.

I don’t know what the movie will be like. As I said, I don’t want to like it. The only thing I’m certain of is that whoever cut that teaser trailer knows exactly how I feel.