It’s a little weird to screen a documentary designed as a DVD extra at a film festival, let alone one as major as South by Southwest. But as Janet Pierson, the festival’s director, explained during her intro, SXSW has always been about being the nexus of the zeitgeist. In layman’s terms, they’ve always been about what’s cool right now — in film, television, technology, music, sports, fashion and much more.
J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the kind of cool that breaks traditions, so why not play its making of documentary at a film festival, in the largest theater, to a massive and hungry crowd of fans? The moment J.J. Abrams walked on-stage to provide his own intro, it was clear that this was more than just marketing. Because The Force Awakens doesn’t need a marketing stunt to sell Blu-rays when they hit shelves on April 5. The film has grossed $2 billion worldwide. It doesn’t need any help. Instead, Abrams explained that this screening was about saying thank you to fans. It also helped that he was booked for a panel later that day at SXSW.
Secrets of the Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey is a big title for an hour-long documentary, but the film itself brings to light the full journey of creating a new Star Wars film. From the terror that J.J. Abrams and crew experienced not knowing whether any of it would work to breaking down some of the film’s most dramatic sequences, the doc is impressively thorough.
What follows is a list of some, though not all the things we learned from the new documentary. We have to leave something for you to discover yourself.
It all started with Rey
According to J.J. Abrams, the starting point for the creative team was always a central heroine, who eventually grew to become Rey (Daisey Ridley). The doc shows a number of different character designs, including a more Mad Max-esque warrior look for Rey.
Michael Arndt was too slow
Original screenwriter Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) was eventually replaced by Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan. As Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy explains in the doc, he’s the kind of writer who fully immerses himself and takes a few years to produce a shooting script. For this film, they didn’t have a few years.
The generational handoff was behind the scenes, as well
The big theme of The Force Awakens is about handing the story off to a new generation of characters. The same kind of hand-off happened behind the scenes, with effects wizard Dennis Muren coming back to advise the ILM team working on the new movie. There were even members of the crew whose parents worked on the original trilogy.
It was always about the feeling
“The important thing is that we capture that feeling of Star Wars,” explained Kennedy. The amount of pressure the entire production felt to make the film feel connected to the original trilogy is readily apparent in their behind the scenes interviews.
Not all creatures were made for the screen
The creature shop designers noted that many of the practical creatures created for the film were done so well before they knew if J.J. Abrams would even use them in the film. They basically just created a bunch and he would pick the ones he wanted, which sounds like an exhausting version of The Bachelor: Creatures of Star Wars Edition.
Daisy Ridley killed in her audition
In footage from her original audition, we see Daisy Ridley acting out the scene in which Rey is being tortured by Kylo Ren. This is one of her more difficult scenes in the movie, and even in that first audition, she nailed it.
John Boyega auditioned nine times
It was persistence and enthusiasm that defined John Boyega’s work on The Force Awakens. In his quest to get himself cast, he auditioned on nine different occasions. The result was Finn, a character that wears Boyega’s own enthusiasm on his sleeve.
The First Order had a lot of diversity in fascism
You wouldn’t notice it, as the costumes aren’t feminized in any way (something Gwendoline Christie praised for her own character, Captain Phasma), but a number of the Stormtroopers in the film are played by female performers, including one of the film’s assistant directors.
Poe Dameron had more in common with Han Solo than we know
It’s long been reported that Poe Dameron, the ace X-Wing pilot played by Oscar Isaac, was supposed to die in The Force Awakens. Only after hesitating to take the role because he didn’t want to have another of his characters die did Isaac convince J.J. Abrams to keep Poe around. He was also designed to have a very Han Solo vibe about him, according to Lawrence Kasdan.
More things we learned on the next page…
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