"Something funny is definitely going on. We're getting to the bottom of it," read a message on Fandango. 
 
 Fandango and Movie Tickets were among the sites crashing Monday as users tried to secure presale tickets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. 
 
 Tickets to director J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated film were made available for purchase Monday, hours earlier than anticipated. But some Fandango users got a "site maintenance" message after trying to click on a desired screening time. 
 
 "Something funny is definitely going on," read a message on Fandango's site. "We're getting to the bottom of it." 
 
 Similarly, some Movie Tickets' users saw a screen reading "Web server is returning an unknown error," while an Imax error screen blamed heavy traffic volume and directed users to Fandango and Movie Tickets. Imax had not yet begun to sell tickets, waiting until a new trailer for the film aired during halftime of ESPN's Monday Night Football. 
 
 A Fandango rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 The film, which stars Oscar Isaac, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, opens in theaters Dec. 18. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lizo Mzimba reports from the red carpet as Star Wars: The Force Awakens is released. 
 
 The hotly anticipated latest addition in the Star Wars franchise, The Force Awakens, has had its world premiere in Los Angeles. 
 
 Stars from the original series including Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher joined newcomers including John Boyega and Daisy Ridley. 
 
 The plot of the film remains a closely-guarded secret and a media embargo on reviews is in place until Wednesday. 
 
 But some reviewers did post positive, if brief, comments on Twitter. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Star Wars fans react to new film: "Met all my expectations" 
 
 Adam B Vary, senior film reporter for Buzzfeed, tweeted: "Rest easy: TheForceAwakens is 100% StarWars", while LA Times film writer, Rebecca Keegan, wrote: "Story, characters, design, humour - StarWars fans, this is the movie you're looking for." 
 
 Her colleague Steve Zeitchik tweeted: "From comedy to costumes, fights to fx to overall feel, JJ Abrams has created a thoroughly old-fashioned movie." And actor Rob Lowe was also enthusiastic, tweeting: "There's a new hero in town, in a movie that DELIVERS. Cried like a baby, whooped like a teen!" 
 
 Actress Elizabeth Banks, who attended the premiere, was also impressed. She tweeted: "StarWarsForceAwakens totally delivers no spoilers I repeat no spoilers again no spoilers just wow." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Stormtroopers marched up the red carpet in Los Angeles 
 
 According to Matthew Belloni, executive editor at Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, one man was forcibly removed from the premiere. 
 
 Fans had been camping out for days outside the TCL Chinese Theatre, which along with other LA venues screened the seventh Star Wars instalment. Security was tight, with a giant tent shrouding the red carpet. 
 
 The TCL Chinese Theatre - formerly known as Grauman's Chinese Theatre - showed the first Star Wars movie in 1977. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Stars of The Force Awakens reveal their excitement at its release 
 
 More than 150 fans lined up to buy tickets for the first public screenings of Episode VII on Thursday but they got a surprise when they were all invited into one of the three cinemas showing the premiere. 
 
 But two fans, Australians Caroline Ritter and Andrew Porters, turned down the offer because they are getting married on the forecourt of Hollywood Boulevard on Thursday and will be watching the film with their friends and family afterwards. 
 
 Mr Porters said: "They invited us in. We declined. It's part of our wedding reception with friends so we passed to see it on Thursday. It was hard but it is the right decision." 
 
 Ms Ritter will walk down the makeshift aisle in a white dress accompanied by Darth Vader, while Mr Porters will wear a traditional suit but with a Stormtrooper bow tie and braces. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Newcomer Daisy Ridley plays Rey in the film 
 
 On the red carpet: BBC News entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba 
 
 Fans, many in costume, camped out for days for the chance to see the stars on the red carpet for what is probably the most eagerly awaited film of the decade. 
 
 The size and scale are a reflection of the enduring popularity of this sci-fi saga, and of the anticipation surrounding this latest instalment. 
 
 The red carpet here is around half a mile long, under a huge marquee which stretches the length of four blocks of Hollywood Boulevard. 
 
 The world premiere itself has taken over three different cinemas, and 4,000 guests are expected. Security has been tight with everyone entering the area around the event subject to bag searches and metal detectors. 
 
 There is a huge degree of excitement surrounding what is rivalling the Oscars as the film event of the year. 
 
 Disney, the studio behind the film, is hoping this will all give this new Star Wars movie a stellar launch. They paid more than $4bn (£2.6bn) for the rights to the franchise. Anticipation for the film has been huge, and in October some cinema websites collapsed under the weight of demand for tickets. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Harrison Ford was happy to pose with fans who had camped out for days hoping for a glimpse of some of the film's stars 
 
 Stormtroopers joined robots C-3PO and R2-D2 on the red carpet as the human stars arrived at Tuesday's world premiere. 
 
 "Now we have to live up to what the first films delivered,'' said Ford, who has returned to his role as Han Solo. 
 
 Star Wars creator George Lucas was spotted laughing and chatting with The Force Awakens director and co-writer JJ Abrams on the red carpet. 
 
 Lucas said the latest movie is "a film about families and what one generation leaves behind another generation has to deal with". 
 
 Abrams, who has also directed two Star Trek films, said he was not trying to put his own mark on the franchise. 
 
 "I don't look at the things I do from a vantage point of putting a stamp on it, I'm trying to service the master of the stories and the characters," he said. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Fans have been extremely excited about the long-awaited arrival of this film 
 
 Ford said he was not feeling the pressure after so much anticipation. "It's not my fault, we can blame it on JJ. I just work here," he joked. 
 
 The Force Awakens will have its UK premiere in London on Wednesday. ||||| In case you missed it – perhaps you were in a galaxy, far, far away – the trailer for the new Star Wars movie was released yesterday. 
 
 Even though Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens isn’t due to be released until December 18, its trailer was unleashed eight months ahead of that date, at a huge “official fan convention” in California. 
 
 The Telegraph’s film critic Robbie Collin flew half way around the world to see its 111 seconds and compared the event, attended by 7,500 variously fancy-dressed miscreants, to “a mass flamingo flocking, or perhaps the migration of wildebeest across the Serengeti”. 
 
 The trailer was also shown as a simulcast online and, globally, grown men starting behaving the way tween girls do when Justin Bieber takes his top off. 
 
 Like Beliebers, Star Wars fans (how can it be that they don’t even have a name, like Trekkies?) took leave of their senses, gushed adoringly in quasi-orgasmic tones and posted wildly inappropriate tweets. Some even started dressing as Storm Troopers and body-popping on YouTube. 
 
 Just went through an entire box of tissues from all the tears I cried after watching the new Star Wars trailer! — michael bohn (@therettes) April 16, 2015 
 
 One adult male tweeted: “I’ve watched the trailer 13 times now, I’m literally crying.” 
 
 Another: “I don’t think I’ve seen my wife this happy since our wedding day. In fact she might be happier”. Seriously? Perhaps he needs to up his game between the sheets. 
 
 Am I the only man who finds this behaviour all a bit odd? Shouldn’t grown men get over Star Wars already? 
 
 Don’t get me wrong: I quite like the look of the new trailer. To me, it looks mostly like every other Star Wars movie, only with better CGI. It certainly looks slicker than Tom Cruise’s sci-fi flick, Edge Of Tomorrow. 
 
 But “quite liking” Star Wars doesn’t seem to be an option these days. You’re either a fully paid-up convert, or a heathen. If you can't appreciate it as the foremost work of art of our age, you're a plebeian who just doesn’t get it. 
 
 I don’t dislike Star Wars. Far, far from it. I watched the entire box set last summer, which proved to be a life-saver on a monsoonal July week in Cornwall. My son loved it. But then, he’s six. 
 
 I remember going to see the first Star Wars film in 1977 and being pant-wettingly excited about it. But then, I was seven. 
 
 I’ll probably see The Force Awakens at some point, after my son nags me into submission due to the inevitable and unavoidable tsunami of marketing the film will receive. 
 
 The opening line of the new trailer – “the Force is strong in my family” – is telling. Because, like ginger hair, a Star Wars obsession is a condition that is passed on genetically. 
 
 I have close friends, colleagues and neighbours who baptised their sons into the Star Wars brethren while they were still in nappies (the kids, I mean). One has bought every Star Wars Lego toy in existence – these have the biggest franchise mark-up of them all – for his boy, who is not yet ten. He gleefully posts pictures of completed Millennium Falcons, AT-AT Walkers and Imperial Star Destroyers on Facebook, which I find simultaneously sweet and tragic. 
 
 I’ll admit, I’m partly guilty here, too. Like conjunctivitis, you can’t avoid picking up Star Wars toys when you’ve got a kid these days. After our Star Wars box-set marathon, I bought my son a replica light sabre, which – true to 1970s form – broke the first time he hit me with it, which prompted an emotional meltdown, a habit some Star Wars fans don’t seem to have grown out of. 
 
 I've watched the Star Wars trailer roughly 394293493294392 times now. — Chase Thomas (@CutToTheChaseT) April 16, 2015 
 
 You can forgive a small child getting overexcited about what is essentially a kids' movie franchise, but not adults. Of course, it’s a free world, I suppose, and Star Wars fans do not inflict any harm, especially if wielding a wobbly, defective light sabre. But like collecting action figures or skateboarding, shouldn't we leave Star Wars at puberty’s door? 
 
 Worst of all, Star Wars obsessives are complicit in the grandest financial extraction process in the history of popular culture. The Star Wars films and their re-releases have generated $4.54bn in worldwide ticket sales, according to Bloomberg data. This week, the release of the trailer for The Force Awakens added almost $2 billion to the value of Disney. 
 
 Stripped back to bare mammon – which is what all of this is really about – that makes Star Wars just another product, like Frozen, but with more lasers and less annoying songs. 
 
 And that’s why, sorry guys, I’m just not feeling the Force with Star Wars any more. ||||| EQUALITY 
 
 Despite being the lead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rey is mysteriously absent from many toy sets—echoing past concerns regarding Disney characters Black Widow and Gamora. 
 
 UPDATE, 1/5/2016: Hasbro released a statement Tuesday addressing Rey's absence in the Star Wars: Monopoly game, writing that she was not included for fear of "spoilers" and revealing "a key plot line in that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance." The company also said "fans will see more Rey product hitting store shelves this month, including 6-inch and 12-inch Rey action figures." 
 
 Now that fans have flocked to the new Star Wars flick to the tune of a record-breaking $247 million opening weekend, a disgruntled hashtag has been awoken, sending a disturbance into the Force’s franchising prospects right before the last-minute holiday buying frenzy. 
 
 The #WheresRey hashtag first trended over a month ago when Star Wars fans noticed a shocking lack of Daisy Ridley in Disney’s onslaught of The Force Awakens merchandising. The hashtag took aim at the glaring lack of Ridley’s Jakku scavenger heroine Rey from a Target exclusive toy six-pack that included her three new male co-stars John Boyega (as Finn), Oscar Isaac (as Poe Dameron), and Adam Driver (as the Sith junior lord Kylo Ren) alongside Chewbacca, an unnamed Storm Trooper, and an unnamed First Order pilot. 
 
 Last weekend audiences across the globe finally saw The Force Awakens in all its glory, following months of tight-lipped Disney secrecy surrounding its plot and characters. The mystery was so thick, the studio didn’t even screen The Force Awakens for press before taking cast and crew on an international media tour—secrecy Abrams & Co. said was in place to save the surprises for the fans. And one of the biggest surprises in store for fans was Rey, the most refreshing heroine to hit the franchise since Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. 
 
 Rey is strong, intelligent, and kind, a skilled natural engineer so adept with machinery that she fixes every mechanical malfunction she sees, from BB-8’s bent antenna to the “garbage” ship she and Finn hijack when the First Order attacks on Jakku. Watch the film and you quickly learn that Finn, played charmingly by Boyega, is not the hero of The Force Awakens. 
 
 Sure, he gamely swings a lightsaber, thanks to his stormtrooper training. But it’s Rey, not Finn, who fixes the rickety Millennium Falcon. It’s Rey who skillfully pilots them to safety, outwitting a pair of First Order TIE-fighters with ingenuity and a natural talent for flight when Finn’s gun jams. And it’s Rey, not Finn or BB-8 or Poe Dameron or Kylo Ren, who earns respect and a job offer from the most famous smuggler in the galaxy. 
 
 As disappointing as it was to see Rey left out of the Target six-pack of The Force Awakens figures, it came as an even bigger shock when fans discovered Hasbro’s popular Star Wars: The Force Awakens Battle Action Millennium Falcon set (retail: $139.95) comes with a light-up Millennium Falcon, a BB-8, a Finn, a Chewbacca…and no Rey. 
 
 “Command the Millennium Falcon and strike against the formidable power of the First Order,” reads the Hasbro product description, accompanied by the image of a young boy playing with the set. “Imagine its amazing stealth as it dodges asteroids and blasts enemies. Its movie-accurate decoration helps capture the excitement of the latest saga.” 
 
 The omission of Rey from the Millennium Falcon—the ship that she flies in several key Force Awakens scenes—drew sharp criticism from fans. It reminded them too well of how Star Wars studio Disney similarly treated Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow this year in its male-centric rollout of Avengers toys. Despite playing a crucial role in the Avengers team of superheroes, Black Widow was included in only a fraction of Disney and Marvel’s official merchandising. 
 
 More problematically, like Rey, Black Widow was rewritten out of her out of her own scene in Age of Ultron products depicting her motorcycle-flying sequence, replaced by Captain America and Iron Man. Toy partner Hasbro did the same to Gamora, the lone female hero of Guardians of the Galaxy, who could only be found on a handful of officially licensed items despite the fact that 44 percent of the Marvel ensemble’s opening weekend audience were female. 
 
 Mark Ruffalo, who plays Dr. Bruce Banner/The Hulk in the Avengers film, publicly called out Marvel for the mishap, tweeting, “Marvel, we need more #BlackWidow merchandise for my daughters and nieces. Pretty please.” 
 
 
 
 “It’s frustrating and stuff, and it bums me out,” added Guardians director James Gunn of the Gamora toy snafu. “I had a big conversation about this yesterday with one of my producers at Marvel about trying to make sure, especially, that Gamora is represented more in [merchandise] and all the Guardians toys.” 
 
 But the difference between Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Force Awakens is that in the Star Wars sequel Rey isn’t just one member of an ensemble of heroes: She’s literally the lead character. 
 
 Played charmingly by newcomer Ridley, Rey isn’t just The Force Awakens’ new heroine; she’s the heir apparent to both Luke and Leia, the one whose destiny, Episode VII reveals, will lead Star Wars into the future. Even Boyega said he related most to Rey, the true Chosen One of The Force Awakens. 
 
 “To be in a circumstance where you have to find something bigger than who you are within yourself is something that is an inspiration to me,” he said this month, talking about Ridley’s character. “I think people take that away. The kids, all they’re going to be concentrating on is BB-8.” 
 
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 Boyega was right. Kids (and adults) are nuts for BB-8, one of The Force Awakens’ most beloved new discoveries. They’re also crazy for Rey, even if it’s proven challenging to find figures, toys, and other merch in her image. 
 
 Sadly, Disney’s corporate partners didn’t seem get the memo that the rebooted Star Wars is supposed to represent a brave new progressive future for the franchise. The misconception that Star Wars is for boys still dominates the toy industry, Global Toy Experts’ Richard Gottlieb told The Wrap. “I can say that there is, in the toy and movie industry, a long-standing belief that a boy will not go to a ‘girl’ movie and that if you put a girl in a boy’s toy, boys will not buy it,” he said. 
 
 Abrams himself landed in a pickle when he echoed that dated way of thinking. “Star Wars was always about…it was always a boys thing and a movie that dads take their sons to,” he said. “And though that’s still very much the case, I was really hoping that this could be a movie that mothers can take their daughters to as well." 
 
 Well, it is. And Disney, Hasbro, and their retail partners have been caught slipping. According to one of Disney’s biggest retail partners, fans will soon get an answer to their #WheresRey demand—but not until after Christmas. “We expect fans to see more of her as new products roll out, now that the film has been released,” Target spokesperson Lee Henderson told The Daily Beast. “We don’t want to spoil any surprises, but fans will start to see more of her in 2016.” 
 
 Responding to the Daily Beast’s request for comment, Disney promised that new Rey merch will fly onto shelves next month. 
 
 "Rey and Phasma feature prominently across hundreds of products, and are selling exceptionally well," Disney's Senior Vice President and Head of Licensing for Lucasfilm Paul Southern told The Daily Beast Wednesday. "In many stores and e-commerce destinations, products featuring Rey are selling as quickly as retailers can restock shelves. Fans will also be seeing a lot more of Rey with a new wave of product coming in January." 
 
 According to a Disney rep, the company started making efforts to expand its licensed Star Wars offerings beyond traditionally boy-targeted toy lines when it acquired Lucasfilm. That means creating more female-skewing items like home and apparel products aimed at women and girls that feature The Force Awakens' Rey and Captain Phasma, two fierce characters who have already proven popular with fans. 
 
 A source tells me that one explanation for the relative absence of female characters in Force Awakens action figure merchandising is that, with a development process that can take up to 18 months to complete, some products were necessarily approved and planned before others. Rey's "look," according to said source, was not ready in time to be included in teh Millennium Falcon set that sparked outrage among some fans. 
 
 One might argue that Disney deliberately kept its Rey products shrouded in am Abrams-esque mystery box of secrecy, so as to avoid spoiling the movie for fans. But that doesn't explain why Finn would be piloting the Millennium Falcom in Hasbro's toy set, something that doesn't happen in the film. Or why all those shelves being restocked as fast as retailers can get their hands on new Rey products were better stocked with Rey figures to begin with.
– The new Star Wars trailer debuted at halftime during ESPN's Monday Night Football, and immediately became a force to be reckoned with both on social media and ticket sites that crashed during presales for its Dec. 18 opening. Fandango and Movie Tickets both had issues after offering tickets even before the trailer aired for the JJ Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, the Hollywood Reporter notes. Fandango users got hit with a "site maintenance" message, while Movie Tickets customers received an error warning. Imax, meanwhile, waited patiently until after the halftime show to start its selling spree, but also had problems and had to funnel people to the other two sites. Meanwhile, buzz about the movie was one for the cosmos, making it hard to find a non-Star Wars-related tweet for a couple of hours after the trailer aired. The clip—which Business Insider called "glorious" and the San Jose Mercury News deemed "spectacular with surprises"—blasted plenty of computer-generated special effects off the screen, as well as close-ups of newbies John Boyega as Finn, the franchise's new hero, and Daisy Ridley as female scavenger Rey (Ridley got emotional herself watching the trailer). And, to everyone's great pleasure, there was a Han Solo-Chewie appearance, as well as a rumor-busting interaction between Solo and Princess Leia, the Mercury News notes. See the full trailer below. (This couple should have made Dec. 18 their wedding date.)