Two months before the film’s release, extended trailer for Episode VII teases audiences with key characters but still no clear sign of Luke Skywalker

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The official trailer of JJ Abrams’s highly anticipated Star Wars instalment, The Force Awakens, has been unleashed and opens with a masked figure seen scaling the gigantic interior of blackened ruins. A voiceover poses the compelling question: “Who are you?”

Without ever completely answering that question, the trailer, which premiered on the sports cable network ESPN during halftime of the Monday night NFL game, appears to establish who the film’s three lead characters are.

First cab off the ranks in the trailer – which comes after two shorter teasers – is scavenger Rey from the desert world of Jakku, played by Daisy Ridley. A tracking shot of a faceless army of stormtroopers leads us to Finn (John Boyega). He is shown taking off his stormtrooper mask with the words: “I was raised to do one thing, but I’ve got nothing to fight for.”

Completing the trio of key protagonists is Adam Driver’s villainous Kylo Ren, the supposed primary evildoer of The Force Awakens. “Nothing will stand in our way. I will finish what you started,” says Ren to a disfigured mask, presumably belonging to the original Star Wars baddie Darth Vader.

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At two minutes and 23 seconds long, this latest trailer is the longest preview yet of the film. The seventh episode in the series picks up three decades after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983) and, as the trailer shows, features many of the characters from the original trilogy.

Fans of the film gathered on Monday night on a Reddit thread dedicated to Star Wars – ostensibly not football lovers, as they impatiently cursed the game (and the network) while waiting for the trailer to be aired.

Director Abrams sent a message to fans via Bad Robot: “We cannot wait to share the trailer with ya tonight. I don’t care if you’re black, white, brown, Jawa, Wookiee, Jedi or Sith. I just hope you like it! Best, JJ.”

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With every release of new marketing material, including the first teaser in November and a second in April, fans have pored over the scant details and speculated over possible storylines. Many noted the prominent positions given to Rey and Finn in the official poster.

Also in the poster is a goggles-wearing character that might be Lupita Nyong’o’s space pirate Maz Kanata, standing alongside several characters from the first original series: Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia Organa, Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels).

Conspicuously absent from the poster is Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker. Fans have been pointing to footage first seen in the second teaser, and again in the official trailer, of a hooded figure placing a hand on R2-D2, as a clue to his return.

Other characters include Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux and Andy Serkis’s Supreme Leader Snoke. Footage released in August show Ren wielding a red “crucifix” lightsaber that riffs on the original, apparently of the character’s own design.

Trailer reviews have so far been positive. Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw predicted a “return to the verities of character and story” and a “move away from the inert digital gigantism of the last decade’s prequel-trilogy”.

JJ Abrams’s space opera will premiere in Los Angeles on 14 December – a few days before it opens worldwide, on 17 December in the UK and Australia, and in the following day in the US.

Cinema websites in the UK have already crashed under the weight of demand for first screenings of the film, which will have a running time of 136 minutes.