The Hollywood premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is merely hours away, and the rest of us only have to wait a few days more. Literally hundreds of clips from the film have been shown in the various trailers and teasers, but if you're still looking for something new to get you through the week, 60 Minutes has you covered.
The CBS news magazine show ran a profile of director J.J. Abrams last night, and it serves as a nice scene-setter for this week's madness. (Bonus: it's 14 minutes long, so you could just watch it a few hundred times and, by then, the movie will be in theaters!) It paints a portrait of the director and his rise to fame for the few fans who may be unfamiliar with him, but it's the rest of the piece that's really fun to watch: Abrams running around shooting iPhone video of John Williams and his orchestra, showing 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker how he came up with BB-8, or Steven Spielberg explaining why he thinks Abrams "is terrified" right now.
If you don't want to hear the opening of the movie, cover your ears now
If you're desperate for spoilers, though, one of the web-only "60 Minutes Overtime" segments has what you're looking for. First, it reveals the score that will start the movie, the music that comes after the fanfare and the famous "crawl" of scene-setting text. ("60 Minutes listened in as legendary composer John Williams recorded the opening scene of the highly anticipated new movie," a voiceover calmly warns and teases.) Then, later in the piece, a much longer version of the scene where Rey meets BB-8 is shown while Abrams sits down with Whitaker in the editing room.
It might make some fans a bit jealous to see Whitaker get such intimate access so close to the film's release, but it was apparently on very tense terms. Whitaker later describes how he was stopped by Disney staff who saw him shooting iPhone footage at the recording session. With just days to go and so little revealed about the new movie, it's hard to blame them.
The Force Awakens is adding another chapter to the Star Wars universe but it's also adding to the history of movie trailers. Here's how The Force Awakens broke the mold: