Star Wars Celebration: The 4 Biggest Crowd-Pleasers at 'The Force Awakens' Event
The Star Wars Celebration bills itself as a fan-centric event. And there was more than enough to keep the diehard Star Wars aficionados happy at Thursday’s The Force Awakens panel with director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. Here are the four things that got the biggest cheers from the arena crowd.
The free pizza
Even before the panel Abrams and Kennedy were winning over the assembled masses. More than 1,500 fans camped out all night in the bowels of the Anaheim Convention Center to get a seat inside for the panel. Once Kennedy found out, she decided to reward them with pizza. She phoned up Abrams to see if he was in (he was) and then they called up a local pizza joint, which was minutes away from closing, and ordered 200 pies. The pizza place thought they were joking. But the pizzas got made and got delivered to appreciative fans, some of whom decorated the empty boxes (we spotted a killer Boba Fett) and raised them in appreciation at the start of the panel. Many others shouted “thank yous” to Abrams and Kennedy as they took the stage.
The focus on the first trilogy
One of the first big rounds of applause came when Abrams mentioned the new movie’s retro look and the production’s focus on practical sets over digital effects. It was an explicit nod to the lo-fi, beat-up mystique of the original Star Wars trilogy—and perhaps an implicit rejection of the glossier CGI sheen of the three more recent prequels. That theme was apparent on the Celebration convention floor on Thursday: There were many elaborate, eye-popping full-sized models, from the Mos Eisley Cantina to a full-sized Luke Skywalker speeder to a huge, bone-crunching Rancor. But aside from the occasional cosplay Darth Maul or Amidala, not many people were paying homage to The Phantom Menace, The Clone Wars, or Revenge of the Sith.
The droid dudes
Star Wars fans love their own. A couple years ago, Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples were sitting in the audience at Star Wars Celebration — never imagining that they’d be on stage for the most anticipated panel of 2015. But there they were, a pair of expert astromech crafters, handpicked by Abrams and Kennedy to create an array of R2 units for the new sequel. The dynamic droid-constructing duo was discovered at a 2013 R2 Builders Club convention in Germany, where they were demonstrating their custom mechanical marvels. Today, they were hailed by their fellow fans after bringing out the newest incarnation of R2-D2, and then one-upping that by rolling out the ball droid BB-8 to a raucous ovation. “There were a lot of discussions about how having a CG BB-8 would be easier,” said Abrams. But he ultimately hired Towersey and Steeples to help build one because “it was better for the actors, it was better for the film itself.”
Harrison Ford’s appearance
Ford, who’s still recovering from injuries sustained in a plane crash in March, was unable to attend the Celebration. But Kennedy and Abrams promised that the actor would be on hand for the movie’s release in December, and then went on to burnish the Ford myth: “He is the only person who can make an emergency landing on a golf course in front of two doctors,” said Kennedy at one point. Still, the actor loomed large: His brief scene with Chewbacca at the tail end of the teaser sent the crowd into absolute hysterics and left them begging for an immediate replay.
--By Marcus Errico and Kerrie Mitchell
Watch highlights from Thursday's 'Force Awakens' panel below:
