Via Forbes.com:
No new trailer? No new footage? No problem!
It can be argued that there are few movies that less needed the hype and “preach to the converted” adulteration less than Walt Disney’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While Marvel made news by skipping the whole show this year, mostly because they didn’t have anything to show beyond the ten seconds of Captain America: Civil War footage they could have cobbled together, the case could very well have been made that the Star Wars crew could have sat it out as well. J.J. Abrams’s sequel is dropping in December with pretty much maximum hype and interest attached to it, and it’s basically only a question of “Will it be good?” and “Will it end up in the top-ten or top-five all-time grossers list?”
But come they did, offering a big-scale Friday night panel that reaffirmed interest not just in the upcoming film but in the overall franchise itself. And they did it basically without offering a drop of new footage or anything resembling a spoiler. You can watch the whole hour-long panel yourself if you have the time. But the gist is that the new heroes (John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac) showed up and took the stage, followed by the new villains (Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, and Gwendoline Christie). Then the old-school cast members (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and a surprisingly happy Harrison Ford) popped in and they all basically answered the usual questions while showing off not new footage but a deluge of behind-the-scenes material.
They unspooled a 3.5-minute montage of behind-the-scenes footage. And after it was over J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy took the entire 7,000 crowd to a free Star Wars in concert event. There will be no new trailer until the Fall (attached, I’m guessing, to Walt Disney’s Steven Spielberg thriller Bridge of Spies) and there were no real spoilers of note. Yet every single person in attendance not only got their money’s worth but left more excited about the movie than they were at the start of the panel. I could carp that the emphasis on practical effects and physical sets and costumes is something of a red herring, as the deluge of CGI in George Lucas’s prequels has become something of a fall guy for the various reasons those films didn’t work as well for fans as the original trilogy. But the panel did more than just hype the upcoming movie, it reaffirmed fan loyalty in the brand itself.
The Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. DC Comics panel had to wow somewhat nervous fans with the mother of all sizzle reels for their next two films, and they did exactly that. The 20th Century Fox panel offered the most talked-about trailer of the weekend in that Deadpool reel while offering fan-friendly teasers for the likes of X-Men: Apocolypse and The Fantastic Four. But those presentations, as unquestionably successful as they were, were about building anticipation and fan confidence in the next installment in the given franchises. The Star Wars panel didn’t really need to do that, at least not in the traditional fashion. Everyone will already show up this December.
So instead of showcasing new footage or even a new trailer, they highlighted one point of fan-friendly coverage (the use of practical effects alongside digital work) and showed just how dang happy everyone was to be there. And then they took everyone to a concert so all 6,500 people in attendance could bathe in franchise nostalgia. Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn’t even need to be at Comic-Con this year, although you could argue that they would have faced scrutiny if they had bowed out. So show up they did, with a crowd-pleasing panel that reminded everyone how much they liked the franchise in question, highlighted how overjoyed the new and old cast members were to be a part of it, and offered a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage that highlighted how much this new film would theoretically resemble the Star Wars films we all grew up with. They delivered a rousing and media-friendly panel without really spoiling a darn thing. No new trailer and no new footage were no problem for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens SDCC panel. They basically “won” the weekend without firing a shot.