It was only two minutes long. But MAN, what an amazing two minutes. On Tuesday, the first-ever officially released footage of the upcoming Star Wars prequel debuted in a special limited preview release of the teaser trailer, which will ship out to 2,000 screens this Friday for its wide release run. In an unprecedented move, Lucasfilm arranged for the trailer to run both before and after a few select films in select cities on one day only. To see the trailer twice here in Chicago, I sat through Adam Sandler's wacky comedy (as if there's any other kind), The Waterboy. Other viewers suffered through the Brad Pitt/Tony Hopkins vehicle Meet Joe Black, a three-hour torture that might have kept this reviewer from seeing the trailer screening at the end of the film.

Then again, tolerating three hours of mushy Pitt drivel might have been worth seeing that trailer one more time. It's the kind of mega-packed footage that would probably rouse the emotions of even the most surly and jaded film fanatic. For a die-hard Star Wars fan, it amounts to an unabashed, full-on geekgasm of monumental proportions.

Opening with an understated series of title cards ("Every journey has a first step..."), the trailer then explodes into full throttle with the main theme of the original Star Wars films blaring in the background. A series of rapid shots from the action of the film follow, leaping from the planet Tattooine to Coruscant to the seat of the galaxy's most powerful royal family, Naboo. We gain a glimpse into the Jedi's inner sanctum, as several clips chronicle the presentation of Anakin Skywalker before this august body to be considered for training as a Jedi Knight. There's also ample chance to analyze Jar Jar Binks, the Chewbacca-style character of this installment, who will provide comic relief and is one of the first major characters in film history to be fully generated by computer.

You can't glean much critical opinion about a full-length feature film based simply on the trailer, but you sure can if you watch it ten times. The CGI characters and vehicles look to be fully realized and organically integrated into their realistic surroundings. This has been one huge area of doubt among internet fan circles, as such a massive integration of live-action and CGI elements has never before been attempted. It seems safe to say at this point that the special effects in Episode I will blow Titanic and Jurassic Park clear out of the water.

The brief glimpses of the actors' performances provided in the trailer also bode well for the actual movie. Ewan MacGregor has some especially charismatic moments, brandishing a lightsaber and taking a moment to meet his future archnemesis in perhaps the most chilling dialogue blurb from the trailer: "Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi." Liam Neeson adopts the appropriate tone of authority and mystery as Qui-Gon Jinn, a wise elder Jedi who sets Anakin's tragic destiny in motion by removing him from his home on Tatooine and beginning his training in the ways of the Jedi. And Ray Park, who will portray the film's main villain, Darth Maul, is pure nastiness, his face covered in red and black paint and his head adorned with devilish horns. Maul's bad-ass antics might just give Vader himself a run for his money.

The most exciting moments in the Episode I trailer are those that effortlessly evoke the most magical moments in the original Star Wars trilogy. R2-D2 and an early version of C-3P0 meet for the first time, beginning a relationship that will draw the only continuous line between the six films. Anakin flies into a dangerous space battle and stares ahead in terror as squadrons of starships zoom straight toward the head of his starship, a perfect allusion to a similar shot in the attack on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. In a lightsaber duel with Darth Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan flip over a chasm deep within a massive energy chamber of some sort.

The images fly off the screen and directly into the viewers' imaginations, burning themselves into the brain just as the Millenium Falcon, the Death Star and Darth Vader burned themselves into the cultural consciousness over twenty years ago. Is it any wonder that the crowd felt compelled to cheer wildly at the trailer's end? After fifteen long years of waiting and speculating, the first visuals from a new Star Wars film have finally reached theater screens. They do not disappoint. In fact, they actually push the Episode I anticipation levels up a few notches, if such a thing is possible.

See this trailer early and often. It's pure magic in the classic Lucas tradition. It's also gonna be a long seven months until the film finally arrives, and you need to satiate your magic-starved brain somehow.