6. It Feels Very Like The Originals
As if it wasn't already abundantly clear, the panel all seemed to be heavily focused on confirming that the original trilogy played a major part in setting the tone for The Force Awakens. When Harrison Ford was asked about the difference between working on the Originals and under Abrams, he said "It feels familiar. It is good to be home, just like Han said in the trailer. I am aware of the value that is placed on these films by the audience, and I am grateful that there is still an audience for the original films." Abrams himself was clearer about the film's relationship with Lucas' work:
"When Kathy Kennedy and Larry and I started talking about what this was at the very beginning, the fundamental question was: what do we want to feel? And what we want people to feel when they came to this movie? That was really the beginning of the discussion. The answer was the kind of sense of discovery, exhilaration, surprise, the comedy that George Lucas put into Star Wars was for me the thing that made me love the movie. But when you look at all the things that he got right, its impossible and stunning. So for us at the very beginning, it was really about knowing why we were telling the story and it was to give people that sense of possibility and magic that we all felt when we first saw the original Star Wars."
But don't be too worried about it being a living museum piece to the originals:
"But I will just say that this is all to tell a new story. Meaning, its not a nostalgia trip. We had to go backwards in order to go forwards and if you look at IV, V and VI, those are stories that continue. This is VII. So the history of VII will be what weve seen before so the fabric needed to be that that we are familiar with in order to tell a brand new story.
That impetus should come as good news to anyone suffering fanboy anxiety that Abrams was simply going to make a love letter to Return Of The Jedi that added nothing new.