J.J. Abrams: Steven Spielberg made two big changes to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

J.J. Abrams has revealed that Steven Spielberg provided two key bits of advice during production on ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ that led him to change the blockbuster.

Abrams made this revelation during the director’s commentary for ‘The Force Awakens’, at first admitting that the legendary ‘Jaws’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ filmmaker suggested that he tweaked the scene where Poe’s TIE fighter crash lands in the sand.

Rather than just being swallowed up by the sand, Spielberg told Abrams to include an explosion, too. “While this is a CG effect of the swallowing, this explosion was Steven Spielberg’s idea,” Abrams admitted. “He loved the idea that the thing gets sucked into the sand and then … that!”

But Steven Spielberg wasn’t done there, though. Because while he was watching the fight scene between Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in the snowy woods Spielberg was truck by another moment of inspiration.

“When I showed the first cut of this scene to Steven Spielberg … he suggested, ‘What if trees were falling while they were fighting?’ And I said, ‘That’s cool, but we’ve shot the scene already’,” Abrams recalled.

“And then I said to Roger Guyett [‘The Force Awakens’’ visual effects supervisor], ‘Is there any way we could have trees falling?’ And he said, ‘If you want to pay for it.’ So we did.”

Thanks to the wonder of digital technology Abrams and his post-production team were able to make the trees fall in the scene. And it made it look pretty impressive.

This isn’t the first time that J.J. Abrams has admitted he received advice from other filmmakers while assembling ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, as last month it was revealed that Ava DuVernay told him to include a “really cool moment” of Daisy Ridley during her fight with Kylo Ren. So he duly obliged.

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[Images via Lucasfilm]