Let's get one thing straight: come opening day, it's doubtful that there'll be a soul among us who's not going to be clamoring for the first place in line to see Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith. Sure, it's hip to taunt the Star Wars prequels-to give a tortured shriek of pain every time Jar Jar Binks starts butchering words in The Phantom Menace, to laugh at the inane dialogue that tries to pass itself off as romantic banter in Attack of the Clones-but we all saw both of them and dammit, we'll all be there for the third.

So at last, feel free to prepare yourselves for excitement, as there's now a trailer out for what might just be the final Star Wars movie. Naturally, with George Lucas being George Lucas, it doesn't, unfortunately, give away very much. In fact, out of one minute and 47 seconds of screen time, a full 45 seconds consists of nothing more than clips from the previous films, with Obi-Wan Kenobi's (Sir Alec Guiness) A New Hope (the 1971 original) speech about the origins of Darth Vader serving as narration.

The rest of the footage is a dizzying collection of new scenes featuring all sorts of spectacles. Some scenes seem promising, like the evidence of a possible Wookie battle (hey, was that Chewbacca?), neato space battles on an epic scale and Amidala (Natalie Portman) sporting a classic hairstyle and giving her husband an intriguingly anxious hug.

On the other hand, the prospect of Yoda jumping around again with a lightsaber brandished-or for that matter the thought of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) doing the same-is not likely to be received kindly by the same purists who wept for their corrupted childhood memories when Attack of the Clones was still in theaters.

Yet it is impossible not to be driven mad with anticipation for the third prequel, based on the trailer. After all, it has the one element that was so sadly lacking in the other two films (not that anything could have really been done about it): Vader; not as a little boy, not as a whiny young man, but as an imposing presence of evil-the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, in the rockin' black garb we've missed for so long.

Hearing the familiar baritone voice of James Earl Jones answering the Emperor's commands, followed by the Jedi formerly known as Anakin Skywalker rising up on a table out of the smoke, rasping away, is dangerously close to being the equivalent of movie geek Valhalla.

Anyone who's been following the series has been waiting for the events of this film, from the birth of the Skywalker twins, to the fall of the Republic, to the climactic fight between Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Vader. With a film of this magnitude, even the briefest snippets of what is to come are definitely a not a sight for sore eyes.