Watch: New Star Wars Trailer Cranks Up the Heat

The run-up to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is getting real, as the rate at which we're getting peeks at the film picks up. A new international trailer released today by Disney Japan offers glimpses of characters and situations that we've not seen before, and the new footage is, frankly, pretty exciting.

The new trailer includes plenty of not-seen-before action featuring TIE fighters, X-wings and the Millennium Falcon, but the most notable part of the clip is the increased exposure of new characters Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren. We also see, briefly, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca and C-3PO. R2-D2 sits this one out, and Luke Skywalker is still ominously absent.

Rey is certainly in the forefront of this new trailer, and we get more of her narration and interaction with Finn and the droid BB-8. Perhaps the most thrilling part of the trailer, though, is near the end, where Kylo Ren, for the first time, directly and frighteningly, interacts with Rey.