Harrison Ford injured his ankle in June of 2014 on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which led to rumors about major rewrites before the cast and crew took only two weeks off and Ford was back to making blaster noises in no time. It was just one of many injuries for Ford, one which also broke director J.J. Abrams’ back.
Abrams spoke with Chris Rock about Ford’s injury, along with many other topics which we’ve already covered, at the Tribeca Film Festival. One aspect of that discussion we missed at first was Abrams calling Ford’s injury a blessing in disguise, as it allowed him to improve the chemistry between Rey and Finn.
“When I was on the set of the Millennium Falcon and we started to do work with Rey and Finn, the first time we did it, it didn’t work at all. It was much more contentious. I didn’t direct it right. It was set up all wrong, and when Harrison Ford got injured — which was a very scary day — we ended up having a few weeks off, and it was during that time that I really got to look at what we had done and rewrite quite a bit of that relationship. So when we came back to work again, we actually just reshot from the ground up, those scenes. It was an amazingly helpful thing to get these two characters to where they needed to be.” (Via)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens would have been a very different movie had the friendship between Rey and Finn been unbelievable. And the extra time off also gave Abrams more time to write some Dad Solo jokes.
Yep, that’s exactly how it happened. It’s true. All of it.
(Via IGN)
