Star Wars: the force awakens
It’s. Finally. Here. How will J.J. ensure it’s great?
“We are here on Day 1... of Star Wars: Episode VII. How incredibleis that ?” J.J. Abrams
16 May, 2014. Abu Dhabi. Sun, sand, extras and crew members as far as the eye can see, as J.J. Abrams presides over the first clack of the clapperboard for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh official instalment in the canon. Incredible doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The film’s mere existence is incredulous enough for fans who’ve felt like they’ve belonged in a galaxy far, far away ever since George Lucas unveiled Star Wars 38 years ago; it of course had a seismic impact on the future of cinema, and established an unprecedented ‘expanded universe’ that felt like it tangibly existed beyond the edges of just one film. As the universe unfolded further with The
Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, the mythology grew even more off-screen, through the merchandise, the tie-in books, and the fans’ inexhaustible imaginations. So when Lucas decided to delve into the world again with a prequel trilogy, beginning with 1999’s The
Phantom Menace, expectations were sky high… only to be blown to smithereens like a Death Star. The CGI-slick world failed to capture the imagination like the worn-in dustiness of the original trilogy; it was perhaps no surprise, then, that while promoting Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull in 2008, Lucas told Total Film there would be no further Star Wars films. “I’ve left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features,” he said. “There will definitely be no Episodes VII-IX. That’s because there isn’t any story.”
But when Disney purchased Lucasfilm for a cool $4bn (and change), the film franchise was defibrillated, with plans announced for a new trilogy of ‘Episodes’, plus standalone spin-off films to plug the gaps in the years between each release. Star Wars was back in business. And while director J.J. Abrams seems like the perfect person to reinvigorate the series, having successfully brought Star
Trek back to the big screen to the delight of Trekkies and non-fans alike, even he needed convincing, with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy eventually winning him over with the tantalising question, “Who is Luke Skywalker?” Lucas’ prequels, after all, were confined to the backstories of established characters, but Abrams was free to explore what happened to the franchise favourites after Jedi. Even if you felt burned by the prequels, the prospect of seeing Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford returning to their iconic roles is simply irresistible.
“It never occurred to me to think about [ returning to play Han Solo] because I never thought it would come back,” drawls Ford. “I never thought we’d do another.” While The
Force Awakens follows on from Return Of The Jedi, the films are separated by an almost-real time 30-year gap. Ford and co don’t need to pretend to be several decades younger. For actor and director, the idea of slapping Han Solo back on the screen just as he was at the end of Jedi didn’t seem right. Time has passed. Things have changed. “I think it was really important to [ Harrison] that Han Solo had lived a life,” Abrams tells TF. “Meaning he can’t come in and do, or be expected to do, the same thing he did when he was 30. And so we both obviously agreed on that. It would be ridiculous if he hadn’t matured somewhat. But at the same time, as we all know, how much do we ever really change? And so he’s still very much Han Solo.”
“It should have felt ridiculous…” admits Ford. “I will tell you, it felt great. I was proud and grateful to once again be involved.” Back as Princess Leia Organa (“Darth Vader’s little girl”), Fisher deadpans that, “Nothing has changed except the hair.” While plot details have been more covert than the Death Star blueprints, you can glean from the trailers that returnees Han, Leia and an all-but-invisible Luke (not to mention Chewie, C-3PO and R2-D2) will be secondary to the main plot, as the story is carried forward by two characters played by
relative unknowns, the lack of A-list leads echoing the young cast Lucas picked back in ’77. Finding the right actors was never going to be a small task. Attack The Block’s John Boyega won the role of Finn, a Stormtrooper who abandons his duties in search of a higher calling, after enduring “seven months of an interesting, X Factor- esque audition process”.
When we meet Boyega in a sleek suite in London’s Corinthia Hotel in September 2015, he looks every inch the movie star in a black leather bomber jacket, Clubmaster sunglasses tucked into his shirt pocket. It’s certainly a change from being in full costume in Abu Dhabi. “The Stormtrooper outfit… we have a long, uncomfortable relationship,” he laughs.
Newcomer Daisy Ridley – a 23-year-old Brit for whom The Force Awakens marks a first major film role (she had scenes deleted from
The Inbetweeners 2) – had a considerably more comfortable costume, befitting the fact her character, lone scavenger Rey, hails from the desert planet Jakku that Abu Dhabi stands in for. “I was super-cool – much cooler that John in a Stormtrooper outfit,” she giggles. She’s not so inconspicuous today though, brimming with energy and oozing confidence in a black and white pinstripe suit. Ridley secured the role after five auditions over a seven-month process.
Obviously J.J.’s mind-control tricks have worked, as the new duo are unwilling to give up any form of spoiler, or even the vaguest plot detail. Boyega doesn’t even fall into TF’s trap when we ask him if he’d describe his character as the Luke or Han of The Force Awakens. “Ooh,” he gasps, “that would be giving it away. But he does have a very nice light-hearted comedic element to him that’s quite dry and sometimes quite outward. For me, he’s very likeable.
I think the whole combination of everyone – Finn and Rey and Poe – they’re quite likeable characters and quite sweet, but quite heroic and epic at the same time.” Poe would be the amusingly named Poe Dameron, played by Oscar Isaac, who completes the heroic triumvirate at the core of the film. On the same subject, Isaac himself admits that Poe brings “a specific colour that he adds to the film. It’s one that’s energetic. There’s almost an old-school, His Girl Friday, Cary Grant kind of quickness to it, and that speed is something that J.J. really likes.”
Ridley does at least give some sense of where we’ll find her character in Act One. “In comparison to the [ female characters] before – Leia and her mother were princesses; they were born into privilege. And Rey is not. She’s alone. She’s literally scavenging for food every day. At the beginning of the film, she has no one. Along the way she goes on this incredible emotional journey.” Early on Rey can be seen searching through the vast wreckage of a downed Imperial Destroyer. Thirty years on, the Empire has fallen on hard times, but the First Order has risen in its place.
Led by Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke (an as-yet unseen performance-capture creation), the First Order are the Big Bads of TFA. Among their number is the mysterious Kylo Ren, played by Girls actor Adam Driver, a masked, ‘broad-saber’-wielding warrior who seems to be occupying the obligatory ‘cool-as-fuck badass villain’ spot. A Darth Vader devotee, Kylo Ren keeps the remains of the erstwhile Anakin Skywalker’s charred helmet close by, promising, “I will finish what you started.” Tall and rangy, Driver is new to the blockbuster experience. “I feel like some of the movies are so heavy on special effects or visuals and a lot of things get lost as far as two people talking to one another,” he says. “And that was something that J.J. stressed from the beginning; it was all character. There was hardly any talk of special effects.”
Also on the Dark Side, is Domhnall Gleeson’s
General Hux. “General Hux is probably one of the bad guys, depending on your point of view,” laughs the affable Irishman, who bagged his role one day before the now-famous cast table-read took place in April 2014. “He works with Kylo Ren and Snoke, and is in charge of the military operation. He isn’t a particularly nice fella.” Clean-shaven, with his ginger hair swept back, he looks like he could have stepped off the set of the Death Star in ’77, the type of subordinate you could imagine Vader strangling with a Force chokehold. Although, the First Order’s stronghold would probably eclipse the Death Star in sheer scale. “The name of the First Order base is Starkiller Base,” confirms Abrams, with a nod that harks back to Lucas’ early script drafts for The Star Wars (Skywalker was Starkiller back then). The base itself is an ice planet that has been converted into a world-destroying weapon.
And in terms of the muscle, The Force Awakens is introducing the franchise’s first female Stormtrooper, Captain Phasma (right). Played by Gwendoline Christie ( Game Of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth), Phasma has a gleaming chrome suit of armour, and her name was inspired by the murderous reflective sphere in horror curio Phantasm. In the flesh, Christie stands proudly at 6ft 3in (plus heels), but she couldn’t be less intimidating. Due to the limited (read, non-existent) amount of info the cast can actually share about their characters, we don’t know if she’ll actually be seen sans mask in the film, but when we meet she’s in a simple white shirt and black trousers, blonde hair swept to the side. She laughs in TF’s face (nicely) when we ask if she can tell us anything about the characters she interacts with. “No!” She is at least more forthcoming when it comes to talking about the casting process. “As soon as I heard that they were going to be making [ another] Star Wars, I was like a dog with a bone,” she grins. “I was absolutely focused on being seen for it. I so, so wanted to be a part of it.”
Badgering her agent, Christie finally auditioned. “I was shocked that the brilliant Nina Gold – who was casting Star Wars, and who also cast Game Of Thrones – said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been talking about her.’ Once I’d scooped myself off the floor…” The GOT team were flexible with her shooting schedule, and before she knew it she was striding onto set in that distinctive suit of armour. “It was a very interesting experience because one of the reasons I love Captain Phasma is not only is she the first female villain in Star Wars, but I think it’s unusual for a female character to be presented [ this way] – we don’t judge her because of the way she looks in flesh.”
You might wonder how a character will retain an essence of femininity when her face is concealed by a featureless mask, but Christie wasn’t concerned. “From the second I put the costume on, I really felt like I wanted to have fun with it,” she says. “Definitely I wanted the character to have femininity and a heavy dose of sass because I don’t think we’ve seen that in a Stormtrooper before. We haven’t seen a female Stormtrooper behave that way.”
It seems that one-dimensional villainy is most certainly not on the cards. Kylo Ren might wind up torturing Poe, but Isaac has praise for the actor behind the mask. “I think Adam will be horrifying and very scary, but also with a real emotional core.” Adds Christie: “Personally, I feel that these characters are people. In life, people are not 100 per cent good or 100 per cent bad. So, it’s just looking at parts as people.” Other ‘people’ on the call sheet that we’ve not been introduced to yet include Lupita Nyong’o’s mo-cap space pirate Maz Kanata [ see opposite page] and Max von Sydow’s unnamed character; we don’t even know which side they’re on.
While Star Wars’ enduring appeal has seen it amass one of the mightiest pop-culture fanbases ever, The Force Awakens is aiming to be even more inclusive, not only with a formidable female ’trooper, but also with a young hero duo comprising a black lead character, and a gutsy, resourceful female hero, as far away from a damsel as you could hope. Depressingly, Boyega’s casting attracted some racist comments online. The actor moved to shut down the haters as far back as November 2014, when he took to social media to politely address
“i was proud and grateful to be involved” harrison ford
the issue by saying, “To whom it may concern… Get used to it.” The problem again reared its ugly head when a small minority of Twitter users started a #BoycottStarWarsVII hashtag, claiming the film represented “anti-white propaganda”. Thankfully, the hashtag was swiftly hijacked by users mocking its bigotry. And if the final trailer’s record-breaking 112m views in 24 hours is anything to go by, that ‘boycott’ represents a small minority indeed. In the UK, the film broke records for pre-sale tickets, with more than 200,000 sold within the first day. Boyega doesn’t go into detail on the subject of representation in the film, but he does say, “It’s going to be amazing for everybody to relate. Especially with the strong female characters that we have, it’s going to be a great opportunity for everyone to see themselves represented up there in space.”
Ridley similarly refuses to put a reductive slant on the issue. “I think especially with The Hunger Games and stuff like that, there is a huge audience across the board – gender, sexuality, everything – for big films that tell action stories with an emotional heart, and Star Wars is one of those,” she says, adding, “I don’t think it’s just girls that will look up to Rey… She’s someone that I think people will really connect with.”
Incorporating the original-trilogy actors into a film populated with wholly new characters is just one way in which The Force Awakens is meshing the old and new. It also extends to the technology, which has demonstrably leant on real props and settings much more than the green-screen-heavy prequel trilogy. “We got to use all sorts of technology,” explains Abrams. “Even stuff that hadn’t been used in a long time. There were a lot of assumptions that certain things would be CG, and we ended up doing them practically. We used CG to remove things instead of adding things.” As well as the alien who interrupted Abrams during his ‘Force For Change’ charity video,
The Force Awakens’ true scene-stealer looks to be BB-8, the ball droid who became 2015’s must-have Christmas present months before the film came out. BB-8 is “so difficult” to work with, jokes Ridley
of the ‘actor’ operated by two puppeteers. “They were so skilled,” she continues, “He really felt like he was alive. He was given a soul by those guys.”
“It’s incredible how much the animatronic puppeteering work has evolved, too; it’s not just the computers that have gotten better, but practical effects have gotten better,” says Abrams. “And I think you’ll see that was our goal – the story was the master we were serving, not, ‘Oh here’s a visual effect or technology,’ and making sure we were working really hard to tell as good a story as we could using whatever technology was available, old and new.”
Boyega’s Finn’s journey from AWOL Stormtrooper to hero will eventually see him wielding a lightsaber in a face-off with Kylo Ren. “It’s heavy to swing,” he says of the coolest weapon in the galaxy. “You’ve got to pump some weights to really, really swing that lightsaber. But it’s fantastic. You feel very, very powerful.” Christie, meanwhile, was happy to get her hands on some firepower after her sword-wielding days on
Thrones. “It’s very timely that I should, at last, have a gun,” she smiles. “Captain Phasma has a phenomenal blaster. It’s the most beautifully crafted thing. Everything on it works, although I haven’t tried to blast anyone with it yet.”
Strolling around the sets, even the cast are blown away by the attention to detail, stepping into an imaginary world of their childhood made real. “It feels proper and real and tangible and physical,” says Serkis, whose pioneering performance-capture will be a prime example of modern technology sitting alongside the puppets. “I think the fans will flip their minds.” Domhnall Gleeson calls the Pinewood sets “the stuff you imagined when you were a kid that you didn’t think would happen any more”. Boyega can’t hide his glee at eating his lunch on the Millennium Falcon, and Isaac warmly remembers the cameo given to his Star Wars- mad uncle by Abrams. There’s the inescapable sense that the film is being made from a fan’s perspective, such is the enthusiasm that beams from everyone involved.
“The fans do own Star Wars; it’s a fundamental fact,” says Boyega. “They’re the ones that have built up this culture within this franchise.” The sentiment echoes with Abrams, who’s serving the fanbase that he’s so clearly a part of. “Obviously the fans aren’t just incredibly passionate, but they feel in a weird way like family,” says the director. “Meaning, I know what it feels like to love this world that George Lucas created. So it was important to me that we do something that honours their commitment. But you can’t make a movie for the fans. You have to make a movie that you believe in your heart fans will love. And we’re doing the best we can to do that.”
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on 17 December.
“we used all sorts of tech – stuff that hasn’t been used in ages” J.J. Abrams