Over 30 years since Return of the Jedi, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill are back
with a new young cast to take us to a galaxy far, far away.
I'm Jan and this is 15 things you probably didn't know about Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The design of Kylo Ren's lightsaber was partly inspired by a dinner party conversation between
director JJ Abrams and his friend Jonathan Ive, who just happens to be Apple's Chief
Design Officer.
Ive suggested the new lightsaber should be less precise, more uneven or "spitty", as
he put it, and added that making it more "more analogue and more primitive" would give it
a "more ominous" feel.
Captain Phasma's shiny armoured costume was actually originally pitched as a costume for
Kylo Ren.
For story reasons, JJ Abrams decided it wouldn't work for that character, but liked the design
so much that he decided it was perfect for Captain Phasma.
In fact, that silvery chrome-like design reminded Abrams of a 1979 horror film in which the
antagonist attacks his victims with a silver sphere.
The name of that film was Phantasm, which provided the inspiration for the name of Captain
Phasma.
Oh, and by the way, according to screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, Captain Phasma was originally
going to be a male character but the role's gender was later swapped and Gwendoline Christie
was cast.
The hard, white plasticky look of Stormtroopers made costume designer Michael Kaplan think
of his iPhone, which gave him the idea for the sleek look of the Stormtrooper costumes
in The Force Awakens.
The new Stormtrooper costumes are also tougher and more flexible than the original vacuum-formed
suits as they were cast in a thicker polyurethane plastic.
Oscar Isaac's character Poe Dameron was partly named after JJ Abrams' assistant at Bad Robot,
Morgan Dameron.
However, Abrams can't quite remember the origins of the character's first name, but thinks
it may have been subconsciously named after his daughter's toy polar bear which is called
Po.
As for the name BB-8, according to Abrams both the letter B and the number 8 were just
"sort of how [the droid] looked to [him]" and he simply liked the onomatopoeic sound
of the name.
Before going on set, to ready herself to play Rey, Daisy Ridley would listen in her trailer
to I'll Make A Man Out Of You from Disney's 1998 animated feature Mulan.
And that wasn't Ridley's only musical experience while filming The Force Awakens.
The young actress, who specialised in musical theatre at Tring Park School for the Performing
Arts in the UK, says she couldn't stop singing on set to the point that director JJ Abrams
actually bet her she couldn't make it a whole day without bursting into song!
When he auditioned for the role of Finn in The Force Awakens, John Boyega watched Mark
Hamill and Harrison Ford's original Star Wars auditions on YouTube and drew inspiration
from approach to the material.
Boyega's favourite character in all the Star Wars movies is Han Solo because he relates
to Solo's attitude of 'just trying to make some money and get by'.
Carrie Fisher was not only told to lose weight to play Princess Leia in the very first Star
Wars movie, despite only weighing 105 pounds at the time, but Fisher says she also had
to lose over 35 pounds for The Force Awakens.
Mark Hamill also shed around 50 pounds to return to the world of Star Wars.
JJ Abrams brought Oscar-winning special effects artist and animatronics wiz Neal Scanlan out
of retirement to bring to life the creatures of The Force Awakens.
Scanlan's team designed over 100 creatures, using a mix of prosthetics and animatronics,
while some even had 5 or 6 people inside operating them.
The emphasis was on recreating the practical feel of the creatures from the original trilogy,
while making the best use of technological advances like 3-D printing and small elements
of CGI to enhance the final look.
As R2-D2 is such a fan favourite, it seems fitting that The Force Awakens version of
everyone's favourite blue-and-white droid was actually built by two Star Wars uber-fans!
At the 2013 Star Wars Celebration in Germany, Kathleen Kennedy was so impressed by the fully-functioning
R2-D2 replica made by Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples, who are British members of the R2
Builders Club, that she recommended them to work on the movie!
The new R2-D2 the pair built for the film is made of fibreglass and aluminium.
So, you may know that the Millennium Falcon's circular sensor dish was replaced with a rectangular
one for The Force Awakens as the original was lost when Lando flew the ship in Return
of the Jedi.
But the production designers also accommodated a special request from Harrison Ford that
the dashboard switches on the new Falcon have proper springs so they'd stay in place when
they were flipped.
As a keen amateur pilot Ford was irritated that the original Falcon's switches didn't
do that.
Composer John Williams, who scored the original Star Wars trilogy and the prequels, has likened
writing music for The Force Awakens to "adding paragraphs to a letter that's been going on
for a number of years."
However, Williams didn't consult his scores for the previous films before starting work
on his seventh Star Wars movie because, he says, "it's a bit like riding a bike that
you haven't been on since you were ten years old.
You do remember."
After director JJ Abrams bumped into composer Lin-Manuel Miranda at a performance of Miranda's
hugely successful Broadway musical Hamilton, Abrams asked him to compose music for a Cantina-style
scene in The Force Awakens.
However, Miranda didn't actually get to see the scene he was scoring.
Abrams just sent him the temporary music they'd been using and Miranda took it from there,
exchanging music files with Abrams over email until the pair had completed the co-written
piece.
Although a huge fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, JJ Abrams very nearly turned down
the opportunity to direct The Force Awakens as, when producer Kathleen Kennedy first approached
him, he was still busy on post-production for Star Trek Into Darkness and didn’t want
to take on another huge franchise especially as he had plans for a 6-month family vacation.
But when Kennedy told him he’d have a blank canvas for the film, Abrams felt the chance
to explore what had happened to Han, Leia and Luke since we last saw them was just too
big to pass up.
Now, who are your favourite characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens & why?
And which is your favourite Star Wars movie?
Let me know in the comments below!
I've got more Star Wars videos on the way including a movie review and an easter egg
video, and I'll add the annotations here when they're live.
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Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!