Director J.J. Abrams and wife Katie McGrath.

The new installment in the “Star Wars” movie saga opens in theaters this month against a formidable force: The galactic hopes of devoted fans who have waited a decade to revisit their beloved universe of Jedi, droids and lightsabers.

Can “The Force Awakens,” the seventh episode in the celebrated sci-fi series, meet those expectations when it debuts on Dec. 18? “No,” said director J.J. Abrams. “How can anything live up to any expectation like that?“

What the movie will offer, Abrams told Reuters, is great performances and visual effects, music “that breaks your heart and soars,” plus a story, characters and creatures that are new, but feel like they fit in the universe created by George Lucas in the original 1977 film.

“George was creating a world that we wanted to go back to in order to tell a story we’d never seen yet,” Abrams said. “In a way, we were going backward to go forward.”

For example, he said, the filmmakers created droids “to feel completely new and different and at the same time something that was so of ‘Star Wars.’ That was always the challenge.”

Lucas bowed out of “Star Wars” after he sold his film studio to Walt Disney Co. in 2012 for $4 billion. “Force Awakens” is the first in a new film trilogy.

“There’s no way that I can imagine anything touching the magic of what he did,” Abrams said, “and yet we all did the best we could to make that happen.”

Set 30 years after “Return of the Jedi,” the new movie brings characters Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) back to their galaxy far, far away. Newcomers Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) lead a younger generation that grapples with the conflicts that haunted the past. Disney is guarding details about the plot of “Force Awakens.”

Related articles across the web

• Star Wars 7: Leaked Kylo Ren dialogue reveals Luke Skywalker's fate in The Force Awakens?
• Why Star Wars fans hate Star Wars
• Throwback Thursday: Star Wars Infinities
• A hot rumor about a former 'Star Wars' actor has fueled a crazy fan theory about Darth Vader
• NYMM: Star Wars Uprising
• Star Wars 8: Will Hayden Christensen Return as Darth Vader?
• Let's Hope This Rumor About Hayden Christensen Returning To 'Star Wars' Is Fake
• Prepare To Be Devastated By Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• The ghost of Hayden Christensen haunts Star Wars: Episode VIII
• You Can Own Princess Leia's Actual Metal Bikini From Return of the Jedi