Last night, a very strange thing happened.

I was lying in my Los Angeles bed when the earth moved in a way I haven’t experienced since a large quake knocked me onto the floor five years ago.

Only this time not literally, more virtually.

I was the unwitting victim of a televisual, cyberspace phenomenon; the single most exciting thing many Americans appeared to have witnessed since the lunar landing in 1969.

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Showdown: A new trailer for the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on Monday night

Grief: Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, was seen reprising her role for the first time in 32 years for only a brief second in the trailer as she was being consoled by Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford

A news event so vast in its magnitude that grown men wept, women shrieked and kids bounced around howling like banshees.

Journalists whom I otherwise respect began tweeting photos of their newsrooms in a state of collective paralyzation, hordes of frozen figures standing open-mouthed, ashen-faced and quivering around their monitors.

Twitter exploded.

Facebook erupted.

And a national whooping delirium filled the air.

‘Oh my GOD!’

‘WOW!’

‘That’s INSANE, man!’

‘AWESOME!’

‘THAT. IS. THE. COOLEST. THING. LIKE. EVER!’

There’s just one problem: it wasn’t.

I didn’t get it.

Any of it.

I watched the exact same ‘thing’ as everyone else, and it left me feeling less enthused than a Jeb Bush rally.

Frightening: Kylo Ren is a member of of a dark side cult that idolizes Darth Vader is seen with what is believed to be other devotees to his evil following

The trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which aired for the first time during ESPN’s Monday Night Football show, lasted just two minutes and 23 seconds.

Time that I will never now get back.

At the start, a weird-headed creature appeared and a voice asked: “Who are you?’

To which my answer was: ‘I’m Piers, and I’m already bemused.’

It got worse.

A random person walking in the desert, another weird-headed creature, a second random person walking in the desert, more weird-headed creatures, myriad flashing lights, swords and flying saucers, and then the weirdest-headed creature of them all: Harrison Ford (the great man is so facially brown and craggy now I’m only surprised Matt Damon hasn’t tried to land on him.)

‘THE FORCE! IT’S CALLING YOU!’ commanded the announcer.

Well, I’m not in, sorry.

In fact, I’ve never been in when The Force has called.

Action: Boyega and the character Rey, played by relative newcomer Daisy Ridley, appear to be two of the film's main protagonists

It's back! The full trailer also featured new images of Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, which was a mainstay of the first Star Wars trilogy

I’m 50 years old and I’ve not watched a single one of the six Star Wars movies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried.

Many times.

But I’ve never got further than five minutes with any of them before hitting the STOP button, shaking the cascading cheese out of my TV set and going for a recuperative neck massage.

As the decades have passed by, my distaste for all things Star Wars has developed into an oddly visceral loathing.

I only have to hear that dreaded theme music to feel the skin begin to peel itself off my flesh.

And don’t even get me started with the ghastly merchandise, which seems to pervade every store in the United States.

So I wouldn’t, frankly, know one end of a Yoda from a Jedi.

The only Chewbacca I’ve experienced is the kind that I perform when someone treats me to a Monte Cristo No2.

And Hans Solo sounds like something best reserved for the kind of Vegas bordellos we’ve been reading rather too much about in the last few days.

This, I realise, parks me firmly in the minority.

Online ticket sales of this 7th Star Wars epic crashed huge movie-goer websites like Fandango.

It’s probably going to be a massive hit, regardless of what I think.

But, as with that pseudo-intellectual load of old thespian codswallop, Birdman, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Star Wars sucks.

Chae: The spaceship can also be seen battling an Imperial TIE fighter through canyons on a desert planet

A battalion of stormtroopers stand in formation before an unknown leader on stage in this sinister scene from the film

Don’t take my word for it, take the words of almost everyone involved in its very first incarnation back in 1977.

Legend has it that when producer George Lucas first showed a rough cut of the original Star Wars to Hollywood associates and chums, hardly any of them liked it.

They thought the plot was preposterous, the characters’ names utterly absurd, and as for the writing, this is what Sir Alec Guinness wrote to a friend from the set during filming: ‘New rubbish dialogue reaches me every day and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable.’

The critics, when it was released, agreed.

‘What’s stunning about it is simply how bad it is,’ wrote Salon’s Charles Taylor.

Others damned it as lazy, cliché-d and tortured.

At least that first movie had the benefit of novelty.

The sequels have got increasingly worse (according to those who’ve actually endured them).

Now, as we brace ourselves for the 7th instalment, the whole Star Wars genre has become synonymous with one gloriously British word: ‘Naff’.

Naff, for my American friends, is a derogatory term deployed by rich, privileged people (think those who live upstairs at Downton Abbey) when they wish to convey a sense of something being stupid, lame, unpalatable, and quite shudderingly uncool.

Let’s be honest here: did anyone watch that Star Wars trailer last night and genuinely think it was fantastic?

Or were you all just caught up in a very clever, very cynical piece of marketing brilliance by Disney?

Copycat: Like Vader, Ren is seen wearing a helmet that masks his face. The villain is played by Adam Driver, most famous for his appearances on HBO's Girls

Newcomer: Finn, played by John Boyega (pictured), is seen wielding a lightsaber at one point, while in another, he is seen pulling off a stormtrooper outfit

One based on the old Tinsel Town maxim of: ‘If it worked 40 years ago, let’s just repackage it, pretend it’s brand new, and do it all over again.’

I, peering through my dispassionate, uncontaminated eyes, laughed out loud during the trailer and not for any good reasons.

The only Force it reawakened in me is one of even firmer resolution not to go and see this latest diabolical affront to my sophisticated celluloid senses.

You can stick this over-rated, over-hyped, fantastically silly nonsense up your R2-D2.

See the latest news and updates on Star Wars: The Force Awakens at www.dailymail.co.uk/starwars

The trailer's release comes after a poster for the upcoming movie featured Han Solo, Princess Leia and Ren as well as a planet-like sphere similar to the Death Star - but again, no Luke Skywalker



