Our cover story and accompanying portfolio about Star Wars: The Last Jedi offer lots of brand-new information about the eighth episode of the Star Wars saga—but there are still more details that didn’t make the cut. Below, a list of five things director Rian Johnson told us to expect in The Last Jedi when it opens on December 15, and five things that won’t be included. It’s great news for fans of practical effects, not so great for anyone waiting to see John Boyega’s Finn wield another lightsaber.

Five Things That Are in The Last Jedi

A glamorous casino city called Canto Bight. Star Wars characters have traditionally taken their drink in rough-and-tumble places such as the Mos Eisley cantina and Maz Kanata’s bar. But Rian Johnson, the writer and director of The Last Jedi, thought it would be fun to go the luxury route for a change, and therefore created Canto Bight, which he describes as “a Star Wars Monte Carlo-type environment, a little James Bond-ish, a little To Catch a Thief.” As Annie Leibovitz’s photograph of the place illustrates, Canto Bight’s inhabitants look less like cantina scum and more like mutant attendees of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball of 1966.

Creatures galore. Though it wasn’t Johnson’s intent, his script for The Last Jedi warranted the biggest creature show ever created by Neal Scanlan, the design and effects maestro whose résumé includes The Force Awakens and Rogue One, as well as Babe (for which he won an Oscar), Little Shop of Horrors, and several Disney and Jim Henson Company projects. Scanlan’s creatures populate Canto Bight and Ahch-To, the planet where Luke Skywalker has been living with what Johnson describes as “an indigenous race of caretaker creatures.”

Characters played by Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro. Dern plays Vice Admiral Holdo, a high-ranking official in the Resistance. Del Toro plays a “shady character,” in Johnson’s words, of unclear allegiances. The character’s name is never uttered in the film, but Johnson and his team refer to him as DJ. “You’ll see—there’s a reason why we call him DJ,” Johnson says.

A new major character. The new character who figures most significantly in The Last Jedi is Rose Tico, a maintenance worker for the Resistance. Rose is played by the relatively unknown Kelly Marie Tran, and her plotline involves an unexpected adventure with John Boyega’s Finn. Rose also has a sister, Paige (Veronica Ngo), who is a gunner for the Resistance.

Loads and loads of actual, hand-built sets. Like J.J. Abrams before him, Johnson didn’t want to lean too heavily on C.G.I. for backgrounds. Therefore, The Last Jedi had more original sets built for it than any other Star Wars movie since Kathleen Kennedy took the helm of Lucasfilm in 2012—more than for The Force Awakens, Rogue One, or the untitled young Han Solo movie that will come out next year.

Most notably, a team of Irish craftsmen built the medieval-looking Jedi village where Luke Skywalker resides on Ahch-To, faithfully re-creating the ancient, beehive-shaped stone monks’ huts that sit on Skellig Michael, the island where Abrams filmed Rey and Luke’s encounter at the conclusion of The Force Awakens. (Because Skellig Michael is protected land, most of The Last Jedi’s Ahch-To scenes were filmed on the nearby Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.)