Star Wars: 10 Things I Learnt At My First Celebration

2. The Best Panels Are Often The Least Expected

There were dozens of panels across four stages on the Star Wars Celebration weekend, ranging from Rogue One with two new trailers to That's No Moon, It's A Pencil Sharpener, charting Star Wars stationary from 1978 to 1985 (I'm not kidding). While on paper the best ones are the headline events, I found some of the more obscure ones wound up being the most enjoyable and enlightening.

My highlight was Star Wars Archeology, a series of short talks from the designers at ILM; John Knoll explained how they evoked the detail of the original in Rogue One, Doug Chiang detailed the extensive model work on The Phantom Menace (which turned into a strong defence of the prequels on a technical level) and Kevin Jenkins broke down the development and construction of The Force Awakens key action sequences. Needless to say, it was film geek heaven.

Conversely, some of the big ones almost groaned under their own hype. The actor panels on the main Celebration Stage (aside from Mark Hamill's, which was just him uncensored), relied a little too much on gimmicks from the otherwise-affable host Warwick Davis rather than getting into the meat of the talent.