How big a fanboy am I?

Big enough that I sat through an entire hour of The O.C. just so I wouldn’t miss the premiere of the new full-length Revenge of the Sith trailer.

Big enough that the hair rose up on my arms during said trailer and didn’t settle back down for a good three minutes after it was over.

Big enough that May 19th suddenly seems like an eternity away.

I’ve been fooled by trailers before. The Phantom Menace had a kick-ass trailer (“Every saga has a beginning…”); Attack of the Clones had a kick-ass trailer (“I will raise a Grand Army of the Republic…”). Both films ultimately let me down. This time… well, like I said, I’ve been fooled before. I so want the sixth and final Star Wars film to be the prequel I always dreamed of, the one that my eight-year-old imagination conjured up from the vaguest handful of ideas gleaned from a brief and fluffy magazine interview with The Great Flanneled One. I am trying to prepare myself for yet another disappointment. I am reminding myself that George Lucas isn’t the man he used to be and I am not the child I once was. I am struggling not to get carried away with enthusiasm like I did during the Dark Year, 1999. But it’s tough. I watched that trailer tonight and I found myself buying into it completely. I didn’t think one single element of it looked potentially cringe-inducing. I’m even daring to think that maybe, just maybe, Uncle George is going to redeem himself with this one.

The sight of Anakin Skywalker leading an army of clonetroopers, of Emperor Palpatine drawing a lightsaber against Jedi Master Windu, of giant starships exchanging broadsides like sea-going galleons and interior shots of explosions tearing through their gun-decks, made me pump my fist with testerone-laden glee. The glimpse of the Tantive IV‘s familiar engine-cluster arcing toward a beautiful green world and of R2 in a fighter socket and 3PO in his polished glory made me smile with fond nostalgia. And the sound of Padme’s sobs and Obi-Wan’s anguished cry, “You were the chosen one!” as his student and friend attacks him broke my heart.

(If you caught the reference to the Tantive IV, congratulations. You’re as big a fanboy as me. If you don’t know, it’s the rebel ship seen at the beginning of the original Star Wars, the one Princess Leia is “racing home” aboard. Technically, it’s the official transport of the Royal House of Alderaan.)

Going purely off this three-minute advertisement, it looks to me like this is the film George has been waiting to make all along, the true back-story that he started putting down on legal pads around 1975. Maybe Episodes I and II were weak because he had the fewest notes for them. Maybe Revenge of the Sith is the only prequel he really needed to make, the only one he really wanted to make.

Maybe I’m just a big sucker setting myself up to knocked down again, a compulsive gambler who doesn’t know better than to keep going back to the three-card-monte dealer on the corner. Maybe. We’ll see in just about two months. But I’ll tell you this much: after tonight, I’m feeling happier to call myself a Star Wars fan than I have in years.