Researching Star Wars: The Force Awakens

A German movie poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (notice the lack of Stormtroopers)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a Hollywood blockbuster film, directed and produced by JJ Abrams. Abrams' production company Bad Robot teamed up with Lucasfilm to produce the movie, including his team of producers: Kathleen Kennedy and Bryan Burk. Abrams has previously worked on other large films - mainly of the sci-fi genre - and so is no stranger to large productions. He is probably most famous for the latest Star Trek films, however he also directed 10 Cloverfield Lane and Super 8. Due to his experience with larger sci-fi films, he is certainly suited to the role of director for this latest film in the Star Wars franchise. Abrams was also involved in the screenplay of the film, as well as Laurence Kasdan and Michael Arndt.

Cast

Harrison Ford - Han Solo

Ford is a Hollywood hero and has previously starred in the Indiana Jones films.

Carrie Fisher - Princess Leia

Fisher has been a face for the Star Wars franchise and makes her return in this latest installment.

Mark Hamill - Luke Skywalker

Famous not only for being Luke Skywalker, but also the voice of the Joker in cartoons and video games.

Daisy Ridley - Rey

Ridley was a relatively unkown actress prior to this new role as protagonist. 

John Boyega - Finn

To me, Boyega is one of those people who looks like they shoud star (no pun intended) in a Star Wars film; his passion for the role is superb, as well as his charisma.

Adam Driver - Kylo Ren

Driver makes his star wars debut in style as the new bad guy - Kylo Ren

Budget and Box Office

According to The Numbers, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had the largest budget for a Star Wars film to date: $306 million! On this website, it is classed with the second highest budget for any film (with Avatar being highest) and made $247 million on its domestic opening weekend - clearly this is a HUGE film.

Currently the film's total world wide box office is at a monumental $2,058,662,225, and is close to the total box office of Avatar. It's total domestic (US) box office is another massive number: $936,662,225 - almost $1 billion from just one area. The film's total gross from the Chinese box office was $124,159,138, which is understandably smaller than the gross from Western countries, since Star Wars was only introduced in China recently, and has therefore not become part of their popular culture - unlike places like Europe and the US, where Star Wars has been incredibly popular since the late 70s.  

Greenlight Date and Screening Numbers

The greenlight date for the film was 30th of October, 2012 - after Lucasfilm was bought by Disney. It was screened on an approximate total of 5,500 screens (worldwide) on its opening weekend - its peak for the first four weeks of it being shown. The film was shown in cinemas for about 22 weeks worldwide.

Critical reaction

The film was generally well received by critics and the public, especially since it is part of perhaps the most famous film franchise of all time. It was unsurprising that people would fall in love with the film and it gained a rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.2 on IMDB and 81% on Metacritic.

Music

The soundtrack for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was composed by John Williams - who previously composed the Indiana Jones franchise soundtrack.

Locations and SFX

The first scenes of the film (Jakku) were filmed in the Rub’al Khali desert, close to Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates. 

This is the planet Takodana, filmed and located in the Lake District - England. 

The final scene, involving the mysterious Luke Skywalker, takes place in the Skellig Michael island in Ireland.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens uses a variety of practical effects and CGI. The film aimed to use less CGI and more practical effects, because Abrams felt that the practical effects would give the film the authenticity of the original Star Wars. CGI was used for objects such as space ships and some characters (like Maz) but Abrams aimed to use scale models over computer generated locations - once again adding to the levels of authenticity.

  
Simon Pegg appears in the film as the character of Unkar Plutt - a character who is certainly... interesting in terms of visual appearance. The fact that Pegg wasn't simply voice acting but actually playing the role really adds to the realism of the film.

Marketing and Tie-in products

As with every Star Wars film, there's always a huge craze that comes with it - this one was no different! Probably the most popular Star Wars: The Force Awakens product was Lego: there seemed to be an endless amount of Lego sets and collectable figures.

Not only was there Lego action figures, but also a Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens video game!

BB8 was an extremely popular character from the film and there have been many renditions of him within tie-in products - such as this remote control toy.

The film was marketed using trailers, teasers, posters etc. The first teaser trailer was released on 28th November 2014 - over a year before the film was actually released in cinemas! This obviously generated excitement and increased interest in the film:

Issues

Almost all films have issues when filming and unfortunately many of them are difficult to prevent. In the filming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there were four main issues, with two of which involved Harrison Ford: the actor broke his leg after a door from a Millennium Falcon set landed on him, and he also managed to crash his plane during filming. Daisy Ridley had apparently considered quitting, after she faced pressure from Abrams who thought her acting was stale - he was trying to get her to "open up". Not only was there issues regarding the cast, but also concerning the rights of the film, due to the fact that they were transferred from Lucasfilm to Disney.