What Do the Numbers on the Force Awakens Topps Cards Mean?

Yesterday, J.J. Abrams and Co. revealed the names of the major characters seen in the Star Wars: The Force Awakes teaser trailer in a cool way: through a series of mock Topps trading cards modeled on those from '77. 

In the big reveal, Abrams mentioned that there was a significance to the numbers on the cards. I did a little digging and I'm wondering if the numbers on the Force Awakens cards correlate to the original cards from 1977 in some way. While I'm sure the answer is probably a little more cryptic and clever, what if the answer is simple and there's a line to be drawn between the numbers?

It should be mentioned that all of my comments are purely speculation and not based in any knowledge, just me trying to draw the lines between 2014 and 1977. (And a special thanks to The Star Wars Trilogy for the quick reference on the Topps line).

Here are my findings:

2014: #11 - B.B. on the Move

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1977: #11 - Artoo is imprisoned by the Jawas

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This was the first thing that led me to believe there was a relationship between the old and the new numbers. It certainly can't be a coincidence that the BB-8 droid card has the same number as a card that featured R2 "on the move" from a certain point of view as well?

2014: #53 - Poe Dameron in His X-Wing

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1977: #53 - Battle in outer space!

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Poe in his X-Wing and the 1977 card showing the dramatic Battle of Yavin in an X-Wing can mean only one thing: we can expect some amazing dogfights most likely with Oscar Issac's "Poe" as a key component. 

2014: #67 - Kylo Ren Ignites His Lightsaber

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1977: #67 - See-Threepio and Luke

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Okay here's where the theory might be a stretch... 3PO and Luke in a shot compared to the new "big bad guy" is a tough one. Is Kylo Ren Luke? A droid Jedi? Not sure theory holds up for this one. Dagnabbit.

2014: #74 - Rey on her Speeder

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1977: #74 - Luke Skywalker on Tatooine

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Check out Daisy Ridley and a speeder... and Mark Hamill and a speeder. Are all the rumors about "Rey" being a Solo untrue and she's actually a Skywalker living on Tatooine?

2014: #76 - Finn on the Run

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1977: #76 - Artoo-Detoo on the rebel starship!

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In a sense, this is the moment when R2 is on the run with information that is vital. Could it be that Finn is on the run because he's stolen something that is essential to the Rebellion? 

2014: #81 - Stormtroopers Prepare for Battle

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1977: #81 - Weapons of the Death Star

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Here we see Stormtroopers in what appears to be a drop ship of some sort in the teaser trailer and then in the 1977 card, those loyal to the Empire manning a super-powered weapon. Is it possible that the scene from The Force Awakens trailer is from the climatic battle?

2014: #88 - X-Wings in Formation

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1977: #88 - Stormtroopers guard Solo's ship

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Not much here either. But while we're in speculation mode, what if we draw the line between the caption on the 1977 card and the action that we're seeing in 2014 and imagine that the X-Wings are guarding (or flanking) the Falcon in battle perhaps?

2014: #96 - The Millennium Falcon

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1977: #96 - The droids on Tatooine

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Argh. #97 of the Topps series is the first time we're introduced to the Millennium Falcon at the Mos Eisley Cantina. I don't suppose it was an error that the first time we're seeing the new Falcon was supposed to correlate to the first time it was mentioned on film (and they accidentally put a number one below)? Too much attention to detail for that to have happened. Do you think the droids are inside the Falcon and this battle is taking place about Tatooine, perhaps? #96 in the Empire Strikes Back set is a card relating to Solo being frozen in Carbonite - are we drawing lines to Han being in trouble?

Well, there are my findings. What do you think the numbers on the cards mean and do you think these lines were supposed to be drawn? Are you "seeing something in the cards" that I'm not? 

Sound off in the comments!

Welcome to the Hype?

I don't know what's going on lately, but man... every day seems to be an explosion of hype in popular culture.

Let me see if I can recap what happened just this past Thursday (in no particular order of importance):

• The title of the new James Bond film (the 24th in the series) was revealed to be Spectre and the cast was announced to much fanfare.

• Benedict Cumberbatch was confirmed to play Doctor Strange in the next Marvel film of same title.

• Ryan Reynolds was confirmed to play Deadpool in the next Marvel film of same title (but for the Fox branch of the universe).

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• Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter are (unconfirmed) to be playing Jessica Jones and Luke Cage for the Marvel Netflix series of same names.

• The writer of the upcoming Pan was announced as the writer of the new Wonder Woman film.

• A new trailer for Terminator: Genisys (I think I spelled it right without looking for the first time just then) came out, and it's not entirely terrible.

• The Magnificent Seven is apparently being remade, and it's apparently starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.

Whew... I think that's it? Maybe? But it's a little nuts that all of this happened in one day. And all of that was hot on the heels of the day previous seeing casting announcements for Suicide Squad (Jared Leto playing The Joker in the new DC Cinematic Universe among others), and of course the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer having blown up the internet this past weekend. And before that, a Jurassic World trailer. And before that...

How is anyone supposed to keep up with it all? And if it's Christmas every single day, are we going to get sensitized against all the gifts and the massive bombshell announcements? Don't get me wrong, I'm eating most of this up like an eight year old kid sitting at the foot of the Christmas tree every time that it's revealed, but I'm starting to worry that it's getting to be overwhelming for people. Go take a spin through any movie blog website like /film or Collider and every day has been major casting announcements, huge trailers, poster reveals, all sorts of things vying for your attention.

It used to be religion in Hollywood, and one of the first things you learn as an intern after how to page-check scripts, that you need to read the trades every day and scan them for each and every detail. But now all of the above information was widespread on blogs and social media instantly accessible. In fact, you'll notice that none of the links in the above are to the traditional Variety or Hollywood Reporter publications. These casting announcements used to be on the front page of trades traditionally and now they're all over your news feeds on a daily basis.

The big wave-making announcements are great, but when they increase in frequency it ends up being a lot like walking outside the San Diego Comic-Con in its present state. Crowds and crowds of people yelling loudly for your attention and your senses are so inundated that you can't process one of them let alone all of them. And I'm worried that the end result will be people tuning out. 

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The curious part of this embarrassment of riches is that it seems like a good deal of it is being met with negativity, nitpicking, and in some cases: some baffling backwards thinking. Chris Pratt rides a motorcycle among velociraptors? Nerd rage! A lightsaber that looks like a broadsword? Nerd rage! The more that's being presented, the more opportunities for such fussy complaining seem to arise. And that's not even bringing up the absurd "controversy" around John Boyega appearing in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser as a Stormtrooper. If there aren't nits to pick, let's turn the clock back to the 1960s for some ridiculous comments apparently. LSU professor Isaiah Lavender told The Huffington Post, "Evidently, there are still pockets of people out there in America and across the world that don't believe black people have a future."

Maybe this is all just a primer for the outrageously jam-packed 2015 that's on the horizon. Every studio is now trying to launch brands and franchises. And it's a whole lot of fun to try and keep up with anything and everything, even if it's all a bit intimidating. But you can't help but have that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that the bubble might be about to burst. Is all of the hype taking the fun out of the spontaneity of everything?

Are we losing the surprise and awe that used to be evoked when things were fresh and new because we've been so bombarded with trailers and photos and posters and featurettes and so many other things that have been so highly scrutinized (and, to be completely honest, I'm guilty of it too having frame-by-frame compared the Jurassic Park teaser trailer to the Jurassic World teaser trailer)?

All of that said, this deluge of nerdery in the form of comic books, movies, TV shows, video games, and all sorts of other media sure is a lot of fun and I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts. But sooner or later the 5 Hour Energy that's powering it all is going to start to fade, right?

Jurassic Park vs. Jurassic World: Trailer Comparative Study

I've been a little surprised with the amount of negativity aimed at the Jurassic World trailer that launched on Tuesday. I actually really dug what I saw in the trailer and feel like if you're going to make another Jurassic Park film, this is probably the way to do it. In fact, a lot of it felt really familiar to the first film... As an experiment, I decided to compare this trailer to the original trailer for Jurassic Park from around 1992 in terms of structurally how they were presented as well as narratively what they were conveying.

Here's the results:

:15 (Both Films)

In 1992, Jurassic Park begins its trailer by introducing us to the world that we know: archeologists excavating a fossil while a narrator who sounds like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones sets the stage that mankind has always searched for its past. In 2014, Jurassic World opens on a young kid at an airport, his mother tells her how proud she is of him going on the trip but at the first sign of danger: run. Okay, so in 1992 we have to establish to audiences how and why dinosaurs have been brought back to life but in 2014, we automatically assume that it's possible and that people have knowledge of the dangers (even the past events) of a Jurassic Park. Not much comparison here quite yet.

:29 (Both Films)

In 1992, Sir Richard Attenborough tells us that he owns an island off the coast of Costa Rica and it immediately cuts to a beautiful shot of the InGen helicopter traveling to Isla Nublar. Incidentally, at the exact same time into the Jurassic World trailer in 2014, we see a similar shot of the plush boat traveling to the exact same island. Now we're talking.

:47 (Jurassic Park) / :42 (Jurassic World)

The 1992 trailer needs to drop in a little more exposition to establish how these dinosaurs have been genetically engineered, while the 2014 trailer hits us right with the familiar Jurassic World gates. However both trailers both literally and figuratively tell us that the "Park is Open" (the 2014 trailer by dropping it as a full-screen text card) followed by a shot of a Downtown Disney-looking environment... around the same time that the 1992 trailer opens the doors to the iconic atrium in a similar over the shoulder shot.

:58 (Jurassic Park) / :53 (Jurassic World)

John Hammond tells us in the 1992 trailer that his creatures are going to capture the imaginations of every living creature... and we immediately reveal character reactions to the Brachiosaurus. What happens in the 2014 trailer? We see hordes of audiences at the park with their imaginations being captured and, sure enough, at around the same time get a similar reaction to our friends, the brachiosaurus.

1:08 (Jurassic Park) / 1:04 (Jurassic World)

Jurassic Park: King Kong reference. Jurassic World: Jaws reference.

1:25 (Jurassic Park) / 1:29 (Jurassic World)

Dr. Alan Grant ominously begins explaining the science to us talking about the dangers of genetic modification while in the new trailer, Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire discusses genetic modification. Both lines of dialogue set up what will fundamentally be the harbinger for what's to come in the remainder of the trailer's events.

1:32 (Jurassic Park) / 1:30 (Jurassic World)

At the conclusion of Dr. Grant's speech, your subwoofer gets a workout with a big thump to the LFE channel as you see the iconic waterglass shot from the first film. Meanwhile, in 2014 as Claire's speech comes to a conclusion, your subwoofer also gets a workout from a big thump revealing this weird genetically modified spinal column-type thing.

2:00 (Jurassic Park) / 1:56 (Jurassic World)

In Jurassic Park, we learn that the fences are down all over the park and Samuel L. Jackson can't get anything back online without Dennis Nedry... then it cuts to this fantastic shot of Dr. Sadler surveying post-attack wreckage. In Jurassic World, Chris Pratt warns against the danger of something that escaped its fence and cuts to this image of his character: surveying post-attack wreckage.

2:04 (Jurassic Park) / 2:02 (Jurassic World)

Both trailers getting into their action montage sequences - both hit a similar palms sweating moment because our main characters are up in the air without a net at roughly the same time (Jurassic Park: the characters climbing over the high-reaching electric fence, Jurassic World: the characters jumping off a waterfall). A bit of a stretch, but identical moments eliciting the same type of response.

2:07 (Jurassic Park) / 2:05 (Jurassic World)

Jurassic Park: "Oh no." / Jurassic World: "Oh god."

2:14 (Both Films)

The young boy character sees something with a high eye-line that makes their jaws both drop.

2:21 (Both Films)

Raptors!

2:28 (Both Films)

Raptors... who learn how to open doors (Jurassic Park) / Raptors... who learn to ride with Chris Pratt (Jurassic World). And both trailers end on that note of the dinosaurs evolving in ways that we would never expect them to have.

Conclusion: Did you like the first movie? There's a good chance you might like the new one.

Jurassic World Trailer Drops

So much for waiting for the big reveal on Turkey Day... Universal Pictures did an about-face and released the trailer for the new Jurassic World film today. Clocking in at over two-minutes, the trailer gives us a really good feel for what this film is going to be and I have to say: I'm pretty $#@! excited. Dr. Ian Malcolm told us that life was going to find a way but apparently, so did humans and Jurassic Park (now World) is a thriving theme park akin to the the Disney empire. But, as they famously say, something goes wrong. And what goes wrong was incredibly unexpected on my part. Check out the trailer, now and let us know what you think!