It’s been nearly a year since the release ofStar Wars: The Force Awakensandsecretsof the movie are still being revealed. A collector’s edition Blu-ray of the sequel was recently released and it (finally) featured a commentary track from directorJ.J. Abrams. In it, he reveals that he had a little help from none other thanSteven Spielberg.
CinemaBlenddug into the commentary track a bit and during it,J.J.Abramstalks about a couple of specific scenes in the movie thatSteven Spielberggave his two cents on. The first scene fromStar Wars: The Force Awakensthat theRaiders of the Lost Arkdirector helped out with was when Finn crawled out of the wrecked Tie Fighter on Jakku. It turns out, the explosion wasSpielberg’s idea. Here is whatJ.J. Abramshad to say about the director’s contributions to thisStar Wars reboot.
“While this is a CG effect of the swallowing, this explosion was Steven Spielberg’s idea. He loved the idea that the thing get sucked into the sand and then… that!”
The second scene thatSteven SpielberghelpedJ.J. Abramsout with came much later in the movie. During the lightsaber battle between Kylo Ren and Rey, there were trees falling down in addition to the other chaos going on. It turns out that was also a suggestion made bySteven Spielberg. Here is howJ.J. Abramsexplains it.
“When I showed the first cut of this scene to Steven Spielberg … he suggested ‘What if trees were falling while they were fighting?’ And I said ‘That’s cool, but we’ve shot the scene already.’ And then I said to [visual effects supervisor] Roger Guyett, ‘Is there any way we could have trees falling?’ And he said, ‘If you want to pay for it.’ So we did.”
Star Wars: The Force Awakenswas a massive undertaking and by most accounts,J.J. Abramsdid a pretty good job of reintroducing the franchise to the masses. It is pretty cool that he is so candid about the help he received throughout the process, because it would have probably gone uncredited otherwise. Not only did his palSteven Spielberglend a hand, butSelmadirectorAva Duvernayalso gave him a couple of suggestions that he put to good use. Her ideas were also put to use during the Rey and Kylo Ren fight. She suggested that Rey take a moment to close her eyes and tap into The Force to help her fight the Darth Vader-wannabe, whichJ.J. Abramsacknowledged was a “little thing” but helped a lot.
It seems fitting thatSteven Spielbergwas able to lend a hand in some small way, since he was the one that helped getJ.J. Abramsthe job directing the movie in the first place. No one little thing can make a movie that much better, but the sum total of a lot of these little things can definitely help to elevate something likeThe Force Awakens. Not only in terms of quality, but to the tune of more than $2 billion worldwide at the box office. Even ifGeorge Lucas, who created this entire universe, was left in the dust. If you want to listen to the commentary in its entirety, you’ll have to pick up the new 3D collector’s edition of theStar Wars: The Force AwakensBlu-ray, which is out now.Star Wars: Episode VIIIis in theaters next December.
