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On Thursday, J.J. Abrams kicked off a weekend-long Star Wars convention by revealing the second teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens film, and it included the first reveal of Harrison Ford reprising his role as Han Solo.



"Chewie, we're home!" Ford says with Chewbacca standing behind him to close the teaser, which also included footage of a Millennium Falcon chase, a melted Darth Vader mask, a lightsaber hand-off, and Mark Hamill's speech to Leia from Return of the Jedi, though this time chopped up to sound like he's now saying it to an heir apparent. Stormtroopers, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, new droids, and the sequel's three new leads also feature prominently.

As a lead-up to that teaser reveal, Entertainment Weekly columnist Anthony Breznican hosted a panel with Abrams and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, where he asked questions about filming scenes in Abu Dhabi, designing new droids (including new droid "BB8," whose impressive rolling ball design includes a head that swivels on its top), and casting the series' three new lead actors.

Those leads, Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), and Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), also appeared on stage to give brief descriptions of their characters—admittedly vague stuff about rebellious attitudes and chance encounters. Boyega then admitted that while he was on set, he'd gotten a two-foot-tall figurine of Han Solo in Stormtrooper gear signed by Harrison Ford ("this is weird," Ford apparently said to Boyega). Isaac pantomimed using a lightsaber to recreate how he felt when he'd booked the role in Episode VII.

Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, and Peter Mayhew joined the panel toward its end, weirdly standing in front of a line of stoic Stormtroopers. Daniels had fun with the giant gaffe that the event had posted an hour earlier in the form of a misspelled Twitter promotion, introducing himself to the massive crowd as "CP3O." When asked about her classic hair, Fisher told the crowd, "The buns are tired now, so we're probably not going to have futuristic buns, but we'll have an alternate thing that you'll be very into—which is not the metal bikini, I promise!"

“I wanted to get away from sequels”

At the event, Abrams also spoke frankly about his reluctance to take on the role of leading the next Star Wars sequel. His initial reaction to Kennedy's request to direct was a solid "no!" as it turns out.

"I said no partly because it was an incredibly daunting thing, partly because my family had a plan of what we were going to do the next year," Abrams said. "I'd been doing a lot of things like sequels; I wanted to get away from that. But once we were sitting there talking about what would come next, what it could be... I found myself having this conversation with [Kennedy], and it was impossible to say no."



Abrams also admitted to once dressing up as a Jawa for Halloween—"but I don't want to tell you what year that was," he joked—and then encouraged the crowd of Star Wars fans to take up filmmaking themselves. "Everybody has a phone in their pocket now," Abrams told the crowd. "The ability to make films and tell stories is real and incredible. The technology has been democratized. If you want to make a film, the only thing stopping you is you."



The keynote kicked off the weekend's Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, a four-day convention full of activities such as guest appearances by series stars (except for Harrison Ford, who's still recovering from a plane crash injury), panels by set designers, autograph lines, and even "youngling lightsaber training."

Between a compelling teaser trailer, a boot to George Lucas' contributions, and a lot of high, J.J. Abrams-fueled hopes, fans have had reason to get excited about Star Wars again. (Around Ars, we're not the kind to reach so much hype overdrive that we flip when we see, for example, the series' new Stormtrooper design—which leaked earlier this week in the Star Wars Celebration's own guidebook.) We imagine this weekend's convention will be full of similar minutiae reveals—including the new "BB8," who was introduced, we kid you not, by way of a special Twitter emoji.

Ultimately, as much as we liked the brand-new teaser, we'll reserve our excitement about any other sequel-detail drip over the weekend—unless we hear that Mark Hamill is defended from a mob of fanboys, anyway.

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