Star Wars The Force Awakens is an American blockbuster that is part of the Star Wars franchise. It is the seventh Star Wars film and set in a time 30 years after the sixth film. This is the first Star Wars film that is distributed by Disney after Disney made Lucasfilm a sub division of theirs.
The film was produced by Kathleen Kennedy who is president of Lucasfilm (also known for E.T and the Jurassic Park franchise), J.J. Abrams (known for Star Trek) and Abram's close writing partner Bryan Burk (who is also known for Star Wars). The production companies are Lucasfilm Ltd (known for special effect development0 and Bad Robot Productions (which is owned by J.J. Abrams).
The film was directed by J.J. Abrams who was very involved in a lot of aspects of the film. The original screenwriter was Michael Arndt who wrote the first draft before J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan took over in October 2013 to create the final film script that was showed to world.
This film is full of a star studded cast; some who were already known for their roles in the previous Star Wars such as Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Andy Serkis Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, actors that were known for other films like Oscar Isaac (for Inside Llewyn Davis), Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years A Slave), Domhnall Gleeson (the Harry Potter franchise) and Max Von Sydow (James Bond: Never Say Never). There are also actors that star in this film that shot to fame because of their roles in the film such as John Boyega who plays Finn and Daisy Ridley as Rey.
This film has a very large budget of $200 million/ £146 million. The film had four main locations, England, Ireland, Iceland and United Arab Emirates. For the planet Jakku in the film the scenes were shot in the desert near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for the fight scenes on the planet Takodana the Lake District and Derwentwater in Cumbria were used for aerial shots. The very last scene that features Mark Hamill as Luke Skywater was shot on Skelling Michael island in Ireland, the planet home of the Stormtroopers had Myvatn near the Krafla volcano in Iceland as its background, Puzzlewood, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire was the scene for the Forest of Endor for the Finn VS Kylo and other fight scenes. The former Royal Air Force Station Greenham Common in Berkshire was the setting for the Resistance spacecraft base. For all the indoor scenes it was filmed in Pinewood Studios which is in Buckinghamshire.
The greenlight date was October 30th 2012 when Disney brought Lucasfilm tells to world of the new Star Wars trilogy. This film stayed in cinemas from December 17th 2015 (the release date) until around April 1st in America as it was then released on DVD. In the first weekend of showing the film was shown every 15 minutes in Vue cinema's and in smaller cinemas like Cineworld in Hinckley that only has 5 screens showed only Star Wars: The Force Awakens for 2 weeks. The film received a very good rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 92%, a average rating of 8.2/10, 89% of audiences liking it and comments like " successfully recalls the series' former glory while injecting it with renewed energy.". The film got a slightly worse rating on Metacritic but still did very well with an 81 Metascore, a 6.9 user score and comments like "joyously is perhaps the single greatest relief of the movie-going year.". Overall the film did very well critically pleasing critical viewers and normal audiences alike.
The worldwide Box Office figure was $2,068,223,624, the US figure $936,662,225 and the China figure $124,159,138. John Williams an American conductor, pianist and conductor compose the score. This is just one of the many famous and successful films he has composed for some of his work include Jaws, Jurassic Park and the first 3 Harry Potters. He has also composed for the rest of the Star Wars franchise.
There was a huge amount of marketing involved in this film to build all the hype that ultimately lead to Box Office records. In December 2014 a 88 second teaser trailer was shown in cinemas marking the first of the trailers, even this short clip managed to impress many critics. Also in December 2014 8 Topps trading cards were released revealing key characters and massively exciting old fans. On April 16th 2015 another teaser trailer that was 2 minutes long again hugely impressing fans and critics. On May 7th 2015 Vanity Fair grabbed the spot of being the first cover issue for The Force Awakens and was full of exclusive content that also gripped fans. In October 2015 a release poster and another trailer was shown to the world, which fans loved and showed their excitement all across social media. On November 6th 2015 the Japanese trailer was released and also in November Google got involved announcing that Google users could pick the "Dark or the Light Side" which meant a change of Google website appearances.
In late 2015 20 books and comics were released for fans and Disney and Lucasfilms announced that September 4th 2015 would be "Force Friday" showcasing the official launch of every piece of official merchandise. The range of these products were endless with everything from lightsabers, to lunchboxes to figurines to masks. Lego also played an massive role for the merchandise marketing.
J.J. Adams took very careful care with the amount of special effects were used and what effects were used. He wanted to keep this new film as closely linked to old original films and did not want to go over the top with the effects. They tried to shoot as many scenes as they could in camera and tried to be practical and physical like using flat forced perspective paintings. There is still quite an amount of CGI in the film, there has to be to keep it modern and to keep the audiences of this age entertained and provide competition against other films, but there was a massive effort to stay as practical as possible to keep in touch with the original films.
There were a few problems while filming such as Harrison Ford broke his leg while filming, as a hydraulic metal door hit him. Not only did this lead to problems for Harrison Ford (whose leg was twisted 90 degrees) but director J.J. Adams while helping badly hurt his back and wore back-brace under his clothes in secret to prevent more bad publicity. The level of secrecy surrounding the film also made life more difficult, the scripts were locked in a safe on set and allowed to just lay on desks, props had to be moved everywhere under a black cover and all cast and crew were made to be aware of drones flying around trying to take photos.
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