http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Stormtrooper

Abrams is a great story teller who did right by Star Trek. The star Wars universe is so rich and the fact that he is trying to humanize storm troopers adds weight to their actions versus the clone approach which aims to trivialize the actions of essentially the entire army.

I am glad he looked like he crapped himself it adds a real element to the idea of war and even galactic war. This idea of macho grunts without fear is more laughable than a stormtrooper stranded on tatooine alone, in his armor in danger. There will be plenty of campy "star wars" moments for sure, just reference Star Trek and how abrams masterfully blended classic with new but there will also be rich story telling with somewhat grounded human emotions, this is what abrams does and why I am super excited for this movie.

Also might I add. People "complaining" about this trailer.....its over a year away. I know, especially on this site, people cant wait more than an hour before refreshing amazon sales numbers to claim victory or defeat, but just get some perspective, please.  

Someone dressing up as a storm trooper was done by Luke and Han in the first film so could easily be that situation.

Don't really understand that lightsabre. Surely if you were having a lightsabre fight with that guy you could just slide your sabre down and destroy the handle..it's so impractical. Overall love the trailer though..can't wait!

Actually i think that actor (John Boyega) is one of the main characters. So we might be seeing some stealth/disguise stuff, like in Episode IV.

 That might mean that whoever made it (most likely the Sith-guy-dude) is probably untrained and has little experience. Considering all other Sith are dead (He might start out evil and there are no other Sith to train him, hence the crudely made lightsaber) this guy might be the first of a new type of Sith.

Centuries, apparently. Jedi and Sith have been doing their thing for a long time, and nobody in the "historical" EU ever came up with this.

Boyega is not a "random" dude in a stormtrooper outfit. He is one of the lead characters. I'll just leave it at that. In fact really all this teaser does is introduce the new central characters (Boyega, Ridley, Issac, droid, and Sith dude). 

Also AOTC already showed that the Stormtroopers even in the prequels weren't "white dudes", that actor who played Jango was Maori (like The Rock I believe).

A cross hilt on a real sword serves multiple purposes. First it stops your hand from slipping onto the blade, second it prevents a sword sliding down the blade into your hand, third it can be gripped to maneuver the blade in different ways. The side saber design in the trailer actually accomplishes none of these. If you look at it closely you will notice that there is more than a blade's length peice of hilt before the side blades

So if a blade slid down it would just slice straight into the hilt, so unless the hilt is made of a lightsaber resistant meterial. But if that was the case then a guard made of just lightsaber resistant meterial would be far more useful, because if it was it would open up a lot of different maneuves while also protecting you. As it stands you just have some extra blades that are too short to be really worth attacking with (if you could you might as well just use the full blade), restric the maneuverability of the blade, and opens you up to risk as an opponent could push the blades into you (for example if you clash blades, the enemy could use their off hand to grab the hilt and push it towards your body).

They clearly tried to employ the "rule of cool" but failed. Unless they were trying to imply that the sith is an immiture idiot that didn't think his lightsaber design through. In that case, mission accomplished.

My guess is the sword is a Sith relic from an older Sith Lord. I don't think he made it.

But really who cares, it's not like something like that makes or breaks a movie.