Top 10 'Star Wars' tidbits revealed on the 'Force Awakens' Blu-ray

At long last, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has finally arrived on DVD and Blu-ray! Though it sadly comes with no commentary track, the set still consists of enough special features any fan would love. Included is a separate disc featuring an hour long "Secrets of The Force Awakens" documentary, plus small, individual segments about doing the table read, building BB-8, creating the practical alien costumes, choreographing the Starkiller Base lightsaber fight, composing the score and executing the special effects. For Star Wars nerds, watching this is like being a kid in a candy store.

For a film that was so extraordinarily secretive a few months ago, it's staggering how much we now know about it thanks to this set of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. Some of the Blu-ray covers information every hardcore fan already knew, but then there are these 10 juicy details that were never revealed about The Force Awakens, until today.

 

10. Mark Hamill narrated the film at the table read

There’s a fantastic feature all about the Force Awakens table read, an iconic moment in Star Wars history where the entire cast, old and new, came together for the first time. Mark Hamill himself was there and even though Luke doesn’t have a single line in the film, he was able to participate; Hamill read through the script, lending his voice to all of the scene descriptions, actions and even kicking off the day with, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” This is normally what the director does, but because J.J. Abrams wanted to sit back and observe everything, without being directly involved, the role ended up going to Hamill and hearing him breathe life into the movie made for a surreal experience.

“I think it took everybody about 30 minutes, or so, just to get over the fact that it was Mark that was reading to everybody,” said producer Kathleen Kennedy.

9. Everyone thought they bombed at the table read

John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver were all pitch-perfect in The Force Awakens, but apparently even when you become a successful actor, you never stop doubting yourself. All three of the aforementioned performers were convinced they did a terrible job when first reading through the script.

“The table read was really the first time when I thought, ‘I’m going to get fired,’” Driver explained, “I didn’t think that it went well.”

Ridley concurred, saying that she did, “an awful job in the reading,” and explained that she and Boyega went to J.J. Abrams right away to rehearse some of the lines they had trouble with.

8. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega trained extensively for the Jakku escape sequence

There’s a thrilling action scene in which Rey and Finn escape a group of stormtroopers on Jakku, eventually flying away in the Millennium Falcon. They’re only running for 60 seconds or so, so it might not sound too taxing, but considering how many takes are typically done of every scene in a film, it adds up to a fair amount of cardio. To prepare for just this one part of the movie, Boyega and Ridley practiced interval running on a treadmill in order to capture what the experience on set would be like; they would sprint for about 20 seconds, stop for a bit, and then sprint again, simulating what they would go through when shooting many 20-second takes in a row.

7. Harrison Ford requested a specific spring be fixed on the Falcon

The Force Awakens crew hoped to recreate the Millennium Falcon so that it looked identical to the original, but Harrison Ford requested at least one change. Ford told the set decorators that when the Falcon was built in 1977, none of the toggle switches had any springs in them. The crew had used broken switches to save money, so if you flicked one up, it would slowly move back down on its own instead of staying in place. When Ford asked if springs could actually be used this time, he was told, “Yeah, boss. We’ve got the budget for that.”

6. One of the hardest things to recapture on the Falcon was the sofa

The team building the Falcon had a challenging time recreating the ship exactly, but one of the hardest bits to emulate was something you may not have even thought about: the curved sofa on which holographic chess is played.

“We had to make [the Falcon] piece by piece by piece so we knew it would all work,” said set decorator Lee Sandales, “And the last piece to be made, believe it or not, was actually the curved sofa, which we took a long time to get right, even down to the texture.”

5. About 200 people came to watch Harrison Ford’s first scene

Han Solo’s first Force Awakens scene is a gigantic moment, both within the movie itself and just as a piece of film making history. So, everyone associated with the movie wanted to be there to witness it; Kathleen Kennedy said that something like 200 people lined up behind the camera as Harrison Ford did his “Chewie, we’re home” entrance. In fact, this was so huge that a full day of shooting was set aside for this sequence alone.

4. Carrie Fisher's first day on set was the worst day of her entire career

Carrie Fisher's return to the Star Wars universe, on the other hand, did not go quite as well as Ford’s. The Princess Leia actor confessed that her first day was the worst she's ever had on a film set. 

“I was very nervous," she said, "The first day I had was this massive scene...I was scared that I would make mistakes, and I made mistakes.”

That’s perfectly understandable, though, considering Fisher had not acted in a major film like this in quite a while. Things quickly turned around, though; Fisher went on to say that after this difficult start she went to sleep, came in the next day and started to find her groove.

3. Andy Serkis did his scenes from 25 feet above his costars

Andy Serkis did the performance capture work for Supreme Leader Snoke, a character whose image towers over Kylo Ren and General Hux. So, to capture this power dynamic during production, the crew made sure Serkis himself towered over his costars. During his scenes, Serkis performed while sitting in a chair placed on a platform covered in blue screen.

“I was standing 25 feet up, sitting in a throne, very divorced from the rest of the actors, my voice coming through speakers,” Serkis explained, “It’s not like you’re standing next to another actor and relating to them in a more direct way.”

2. 750 boxes of fake snow were used during the Starkiller Base fight

It likely never even occurred to the average audience member that the final Force Awakens lightsaber battle was not filmed in a forest. Rather, the snowy confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren was shot entirely on an indoor set. The snow wasn’t digitally inserted, though: members of the crew continuously dropped it from above and sprinkled it around the ground.

“They bought, I think, 750 boxes of fake snow, and they keep bringing it in,” J.J. Abrams said with a smile.

The set was also surrounded by a 360-degree hand-painted backdrop, designed to make it appear that the forest was extending into the distance. It was so convincing that if you were tricked into thinking it was a real forest, don’t worry: so was J.J. Abrams himself. The director had some hesitations about doing the scene indoors, but when he was shown a picture and had no idea it was a set rather than a legitimate snowy forest, that’s when he knew shooting indoors would work just as well.

1. About 150 physical creatures were created for the film

The biggest takeaway from all of The Force Awakens' special features is the unbelievable amount of work done by the creature department. Almost every alien seen in the film, including the dozens that only appear for a few moments in Maz’s castle, were actually costumes or puppets painstakingly constructed by hand. The incredible artists at work behind the scenes ended up creating about 105 creatures for the film and the effort they all put in to characters that often only pop up for a brief second is truly remarkable. It’s exactly that level of thought by everyone involved that makes Star Wars feel like such a living, breathing world.