George Lucas sold Lucasfilm and the rights to Star Wars over to Disney back in 2012, and since then it has been a complicated three-year odyssey to this week's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Obviously, the $517M worldwide haul makes it all more than worth it for Disney, director J.J. Abrams, and everyone else involved. But one name that shouldn't be forgotten is screenwriter Michael Arndt, who you will recall left the project due to scheduling conflicts. Basically, he needed a lot more time than anyone was willing to wait for, but what happened to those ideas he originally came up with? Beware of SPOILERS beyond this point!!
When Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan took over the screenplay they essentially started over from scratch, but now we're getting more of an idea what Arndt had in store. As many already knew, his plan was to follow the Skywalker and Solo clans much closer, making the film totally about their children. But Arndt, speaking at a post-film Q&A with Abrams and Kasdan, found that every time he tried to include a certain Jedi Knight, it caused a major problem...
“Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy’s ass,” Arndt said [via EW]. “It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012...It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because, ‘Oh f–k, Luke Skywalker’s here. I want to see what he’s going to do.’”
Abrams and Kasdan came in and flipped things by making the film about a quest to find Luke, which had audiences anticipating his eventual arrival while at the same time making his appearance truly special. It also gave newcomers like Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) the entire film to be in the spotlight.
Luke isn't the only one who gets a very special re-introduction. His favorite Astromech droid, R2-D2, is discovered in a "coma" having shut down since Luke's disappearance. There's a whole line of thinking around why that is, and Abrams says it goes all the way back to Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope when Artoo plugs into the Death Star. Arndt says...
“We had the idea about R2 plugging into the information base of the Death Star, and that’s how he was able to get the full map and find where the Jedi temples are."
So it's kind of a narrative short cut that they took, but Abrams didn't want to get bogged down in "how sh*t happened 30 years ago" Abrams adds...
“But the idea was that in that scene where R2 plugged in, he downloaded the archives of the Empire, which was referenced by Kylo Ren...While it may seem, you know, completely lucky and an easy way out, at that point in the movie, when you’ve lost a person, desperately, and somebody you hopefully care about is unconscious, you want someone to return.”
If Arndt had his way, R2-D2 would have been scooting around and beeping the whole film through, and he would have had his buddy C3PO right by his side...
“I had originally written R2 and C-3PO showing up together, and Larry [Kasdan] very intelligently said, ‘You want to keep them separate from each other. And of course I’m like, ‘No, no, no, Larry. You don’t get it at all!’”
Fortunately they figured it out and Artoo was given his moment to shine. Everyone got their moment, actually, which is one of the things that makes the film so great. But still, it's cool to hear about what got left on the cutting room floor.
