Secret Wars

Star wars | As The Force Awakens prepares to dock on disc, Buzz brings you a breakdown of the Blu-ray extras…

SECRETS OF THE FORCE AWA KENS: A CINEMAT IC JOURNEY

The biggie (as it should be, with a mouthful title like that…). A 70-minute Making Of that takes a chronological trek through production, opening with fears and hesitations about re-starting

Star Wars (“Part of me thought, ‘no, that’s a terrible idea,’” reveals Mark Hamill) and ending with lots of hugs. If a few of the anecdotes are by now familiar, there are plenty of gems to unearth, from Daisy Ridley’s knockout audition tape to on-set footage of that Han/Ren moment (which Adam Driver calls “the scene that terrified me the most”). Discover which main character almost didn’t make it past Act I, gawp at Andy Serkis mo-capping Snoke atop 25ft-high scaffolding and chortle as Carrie Fisher quips “We waited this long? I looked better 10 years ago...”

FEAT URETT ES

There are six mini-docs in total (seven if you include the brief but stirring piece on the ‘Force For Change’ charity initiative). Ideal kick-off point The Story Awakens: The Table Reads brings to life that 2014 cast-reveal photo, with Hamill on narration duties and some of the newbies bricking it.

Building BB-8 offers the Blu-ray’s funniest/oddest sight: a bloke in lime-green puppeteering BB-8 on rods like he’s entering a wheelbarrow race. Blueprint Of A Battle: The Snow Fight reveals some things are still (very) old school – a bloke painting trees on a big sheet – and captures the buzz (ahem) of crafting the big ‘saber showdown.

Crafting Creatures gets under the skin/fur of some of the 105 beasties made, including Simon Pegg and Warwick Davis’ characters. There’s the obligatory FX-progression

footage in ILM: The Visual Magic Of The Force, plus a few Millennium Falcon secrets even the hardest-core fans might not know. And lastly John Williams:

The Seventh Symphony, where we see the 84-year-old maestro tickled to be back in the musical cockpit – but also musing bittersweetly, “I don’t know how many more of these I can do...”