San Diego Comic Con trailer for 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'

Happy Monday the 13th!  This weekend was San Diego Comic Con, which has become a massive Hollywood hype event in the middle of the greatest nerdstravaganza of the year.  There are panels for TV shows and movies at which the studios unveil their latest long-form trailers.  It astonishes me that I've only mentioned it once before in The Hunger Games: Dystopia as entertainment.

Since dystopia has become even bigger entertainment since then, it should come as no surprise that a number of  trailers for post-apocalyptic and other science-fiction films and TV shows were premiered at this year's event.  I'll begin with the one that is probably the most anticipated, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Fans at San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H were treated to a special look behind the scenes of Star Wars:The Force Awakens by director J.J. Abrams, producer and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and writer Lawrence Kasdan. The filmmakers were joined on stage by cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to the surprise and delight of fans.

At the end of the Hall H presentation, the entire Hall H audience of more than 6,000 fans were all invited to continue the celebration and join cast and filmmakers at a surprise Star Wars Fan Concert. The San Diego Symphony performed the classic Star Wars music from John Williams at the Embarcadero Marina Park South.

Vox had the following to say about the behind-the-scenes clip.

The video captures the joy of the people in front of and behind the camera and the appreciation they have for the opportunity to work on such an iconic franchise. It treats Star Wars more like an experience than a movie, and for the fans in SDCC's Hall H, that's exactly what it was.

That's what the news has been like from the set all year.  For a much longer version, I recommend The Daring Genesis of J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens from the June issue of Vanity Fair.

I think it’s fair to say that Abrams and his team were having fun, and fun, if you are a fan of Star Wars, if Lucas’s original films fired your childhood imagination and fueled your childhood play, is exactly what you’d hope anyone working on a Star Wars movie would be having. The Force Awakens may yet turn out to be lousy, but moviegoers—and Disney shareholders—should be heartened that it is being made in an appropriately imaginative and playful spirit.

Here's to all that fun that the cast and crew are having coming through on the big screen.

Stay tuned for more trailers, including one each for "The Walking Dead" and "Fear the Walking Dead."  Zombies!