Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ director J.J. Abrams attended the Visual Effects Society Awards to accept the Visionary Award, and he revealed some interesting details about the sequel, including that controversial lightsaber.

Walking the red carpet at the VES awards last night, Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ director J.J. Abrams spoke with Collider’s Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub, and talked about all things Star Wars, including the new lightsaber that was revealed in the film’s first trailer. Watch the interview below via Collider:

When asked about the controversy surrounding the lightsaber’s functionality, he said, “I will say that what’s been funny is, since the lightsaber’s come out, I cannot tell you how many contradictory emails I have received from people who have both defended it with unbelievably detailed graphics… I’ve gotten things that are nuts, and I’ve gotten people who’ve shown how it’ll kill you and how it doesn’t make any sense. It’s been the funniest thing to see the arguments that have developed over this thing.”

When asked about how the new lightsaber came to be, he says that it was a number of conversations that led to the final design, and continued, “It was a sketch that became a whole thing and, you know, this was not done without a lot of conversation and it’s fun to see people have the conversation that we had, but in reverse.”

It’s exciting to hear the director talk about the controversy surrounding the newly designed lightsaber, as fans were having loads of fun dissecting something that we only saw in the trailer for a split second. We’re glad he’s revealing a few details about the film, and since he was at the Visual Effects Society Awards, he spoke on The Force Awakens’ VFX.

When asked about the practical effects that Abrams tends to use in some of his films, he said, “I feel like the beauty of this age of filmmaking is that there are more tools at your disposal, but it doesn’t mean that any of these new tools are automatically the right tools. And there are a lot of situations where we went very much old school and in fact used CG more to remove things than to add things.”

So it seems we may be getting a mix of both practical and CGI effects in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which we’re very excited about. The first Star Trek film that Abrams directed definitely had a weight to it, due to the fact that they created a lot of the planes and sets, and didn’t just use CGI for everything.

It appears as though we’ll be getting a similar mix in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and we can’t wait for the film to be released on December 18, 2015.