Fans of Jar Jar Binks may have had their hopes of a return for the bumbling gungan dashed prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but it turns out at least one character from the prequels made it into JJ Abrams’s movie: Ewan McGregor’s version of Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Interviewed by Entertainment Weekly following a US screening for the Writers Guild of America over the weekend, the film-maker revealed that the Scottish actor recorded new lines of dialogue for a key flashback scene involving Daisy Ridley’s Rey.
Warning: major spoilers follow for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The scene in question takes place at Maz Kanata’s castle after Rey finds Luke Skywalker’s old lightsaber hidden in a box. She experiences a vision of what appears to be Luke’s Jedi Academy, as well as herself as a young child. The voices of both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda can be heard, with the former telling the young scavenger: “Rey … these are your first steps.”
Abrams revealed: “Here’s the cool part. We asked Ewan McGregor to come in and do the line. And he was awesome and we were very grateful. He was incredibly sweet and handsome, and all that stuff. Then he rode off on his motorcycle. Literally the coolest voiceover actor ever.”
That’s not the end of the story, however, for Star Wars technicians then found a way to splice in previously recorded dialogue from the version of Kenobi essayed by the late Alec Guinness, who provides the first word: “Rey”.
“I said, ‘That’s cool, is that the thing from Ewan McGregor?’” said Abrams. “He said ‘No, we took a line from Alec Guinness saying ‘Afraid.’ They cut it, and you hear the performance – he’s saying it the way I would have begged Alec Guinness to have said it. It is so crazy perfect. So when you hear Obi-Wan talk to Rey it is both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor doing the voice.”
Franz Oz, aka Yoda, also recorded new dialogue for The Force Awakens, though Abrams ultimately opted to use pre-existing recordings.
Abrams also moved to assuage the fears of fans who have wondered why The Force Awakens appears to unravel so many loose ends, yet fails to tie any of them back together.
“Everyone who has seen these movies thinks about ‘I am your father …’ and ‘There is another …’,” the director said. “But neither of those things were in [1977’s original] Star Wars. Star Wars didn’t say Luke was the son of Vader. Star Wars didn’t say Leia was the sister of Luke. You didn’t understand what these references were: the Empire, dark times, clone wars. There were these things that were discussed that don’t get explained. George [Lucas] dropped you into a story and respected you to infer everything necessary to understand what you need to know.”
Abrams said he ultimately decided it was enough for The Force Awakens to detail Kylo Ren’s familial back story. “Can this movie actually also hold, ‘And Rey is this … And Finn is that … And this is where Poe is from?’” he asked. “This is the first of a series. There is a story to be told. And it will be.”
But Abrams and screenwriter Michael Arndt did move to fill in one plot hole which fans have complained about in The Force Awakens, R2-D2’s ability to “fill in” the map to Skywalker near the movie’s denouement. The idea, Arndt revealed at a post-screening Q&A, picked up on a scene in 1977’s Star Wars in which the astromech droid is able to scan the Empire’s mainframe while the heroes hunt for Princess Leia on a star ship.
“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,” said Arndt. Added Abrams: “BB-8 comes up and says something to him, which is basically, ‘I’ve got this piece of a map, do you happen to have the rest?’ The idea was, R2 who has been all over the galaxy, is still in his coma, but he hears this. And it triggers something that would ultimately wake him up.”
Continued Abrams: “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.”
