It's like the Star Wars floodgates have been opened. J.J. Abrams and Co. have been so tight-lipped about 'The Force Awakens' it must be a relief to finally be able to speak about it. And so they have; they've spoken about it quite a lot actually, but now the subject has turned to the film's most shocking moment. Obviously, SPOILERS beyond for those who haven't seen the film already!!
The biggest scene of the film, and the one that probably caused a lot of tears to be shed, comes towards the end of the story. If you've seen it, you know what it is without question. It's when Han Solo, confronting his son who has turned to the Dark Side and become Kylo Ren, is killed during one final attempt to bring him back into the light. Abrams, along with Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan, talked about why that scene had to happen, and basically it boils down to two things: giving the movie real stakes, and making Kylo Ren a total badass. Abrams says...
“Star Wars had the greatest villain in cinema history. So, how you bring a new villain into that world is a very tricky thing. We knew we needed to do something f—king bold. The only reason why Kylo Ren has any hope of being a worthy successor is because we lose one of the most beloved characters.”
Although that was the decision they ultimately came up with, there were still some very real fears about going ahead with killing everyone's favorite scoundrel. Abrams adds...
“It’s this massive tradeoff. How can we possibly do that!? But… if we hadn’t done that, the movie wouldn’t have any guts at all. It felt very dangerous.”
Fortunately, he had one of Star Wars' great writers, arguably its best writer (sorry George!) in Lawrence Kasdan taking some of the pressure off.
“You wrote some of the greatest lines that Han ever spoke, so there was a level of comfort in the danger,” Abrams told him. “You were willing to go there, which made me feel like it wasn’t necessarily the worst idea.”
Arndt, who famously left the project for different reasons depending on who you ask, was going in a different direction until Abrams made him reevaluate Han's purpose for being there...
“I had thought Han’s story and Leia’s story was just about them coming back together. At the end of the movie they would have reconciled and gotten over their differences. And you would have said, ‘Okay, bad stuff happened, but at least they’re back together again. J.J. rightly asked, ‘What is Han doing in this movie?’ If we’re not going to have something important and irreversible happen to him, then he kind of feels like luggage. He feels like this great, sexy piece of luggage you have in your movie. But he’s not really evolving. He’s not really pushing the story forward.”
As difficult as it was to watch that scene unfold, shooting it proved just as trying for Abrams to shoot...
“It was really chilling. Seeing these two actors, they weren’t chewing up the scenery. They were just doing this thing in a way that, frankly, was disturbing. To see Harrison reach out and touch Adam. I know this sounds stupid, but literally watching it, I forgot — I forgot that he wasn’t his son. He did it so beautifully.” [EW]
