Culture

Star Wars: The Force Awakens visited Comic-Con. Here’s what we learned.

Jul 11, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

OMG.

Jesse Grant/Getty Images

Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.

Harrison Ford made his first public appearance since his plane crash.
The movie has been cut, and director J. J. Abrams is now “fine-tuning” it.
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were also part of the panel.
Gwendoline Christie talked about being a female stormtrooper.
Instead of a trailer, a making-of video was shown.
The final surprise was a Star Wars concert that the audience was invited to.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said that Episodes VII through IX will be part of the same saga.

Here’s the behind-the-scenes video

As previously announced, there was no new trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens. Instead, the crew brought with them a behind-the-scenes video, which is kinda magical in its own way:

We're going in! A video just revealed at @Comic_Con takes you behind the scenes of #StarWars: TheForceAwakens. #SDCC https://t.co/ASq8xrIKrF
— Star Wars (@starwars) July 11, 2015

The video captures the joy of the people in front of and behind the camera and the appreciation they have for the opportunity to work on such an iconic franchise. It treats Star Wars more like an experience than a movie, and for the fans in SDCC’s Hall H, that’s exactly what it was.

The original cast was reunited

At San Diego Comic-Con, there’s a tendency to always be looking forward in anticipation of the next big thing. But at the Star Wars panel, the Lucasfilm powers that be reunited Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill, the main cast from the original movies. Ford, if you recall, was in a serious plane crash in March and hasn’t been seen in public since then.

The trio, according to reports, bantered, recited old jokes, and reminisced about the friendship they forged while filming the first three movies. For fans, seeing the three Star Wars legends together and genuinely enjoying each other’s company was as thrilling, if not more so, as any of the new footage from or news about the new film: