It’s a dangerous place, the Star Wars universe. Sure, there are lightsabers, evil entities and bounty hunters everywhere, ready to cut your head off at a moments notice, but it’s dangerous from Disney’s point of view, too. Disappoint Star Wars fans after buying up their beloved franchise, and you may never regain their trust again.

So far so good, though; Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has either been media trained to Jedi standard, or is genuinely a Star Wars fan, because she’s been saying all the right things, including Star Wars Episode VII will be focusing on the characters, which is how the first three (chronologically) came to warm the hearts of every Earth-based geek.

"The story and characters are all we're talking about right now. We have an amazing team at ILM, who can create fantastic effects, but if we don't have a great story and characters, the effects mean nothing," she told IGN. "I do think making huge popular culture — and I've had the good fortune to be a part of a lot it — is really hard to do and get right," Kennedy continued. "And if you don't spend the time you need on developing characters, and finding stories, complicated stories, the audience gets tired because they think they're seeing the same thing again and again."

Star Wars Episode VII – which is still set to be directed by J.J. Abrams despite rumors of his exit – is still an enigma to fans. We don’t know what story it will follow, who will be cast (although there are rumours that Luke, Leia and Han will all return, original actors and all) and how closely it’ll be able to stick to the formula that made it such a well-known classic. And we’ll have to wait until 2015 to find out.

J.J AbramsJ.J Abrams is still set to helm Star Wars Episode VII