Unless you’re one of those people that doesn’t like Star Wars and prefers mature things like buying garden pots and dying of old age, you’re probably pretty excited about the Blu-ray release of The Force Awakens. I know I was. As soon as I got my Dark Side edition home I tore off the cellophane and held it up high like it’d just unlocked it in The Legend of Zelda. (Yes, in the UK they ‘force’ us to choose either the light or the dark edition. I would have gone for the light, but everyone knows you go for black when it comes to packaging and being politically correct.)
I put the sleeve’s sliding capabilities to the test – the contents slipped out elegantly, like a dolphin calf flowing from its mother’s silky front bottom – opened up the case and retrieved the disc. It was shortly after inserting it into my PS4 and pressing play that I realised something was wrong. Instead of the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, I was greeted by Daisy Ridley’s face, out-of-costume, quite clearly addressing an interviewer. ‘Ah, a special message for us higher-being, Blu-ray owners’, I thought to myself. Ten minutes in and I still hadn’t seen the opening credits. Instead, I was watching people paint prosthetic alien faces. I’d put in the wrong disc.
Having inadvertently watched the first half hour of the bonus features, I thought I might as well see it through to the end. And excited though I was to watch the actual film, it was just as fascinating to see how it was all made. What surprised me most was that characters like Chewbacca and Admiral Ackbar weren’t actually aliens from distant planets. They were just actors in costumes. Nien Nunb the Sullustan was played by a bloke called Mike. They were all praising the animatronics – the stuff that apparently allows them to create facial expressions – of their new outfits, stating how the stuff from the original trilogy was basically shit in comparison. They’d even improved the inside of the Millennium Falcon, which, as it turns out, can’t actually travel through hyperspace.
The interviews with the cast and crew were particularly interesting. They were all really modest, self-deprecatingly explaining why they didn’t think they were good enough to be part of the film, despite every single one of them being highly attractive and talented. Director JJ Abrams casually reveals how he came up with the design for BB-8, the globular merchandise whore that’s probably made more money in toy sales than the next three Star Trek films. He just scribbled it down on a post-it note, as if coming up with million-dollar ideas was like buttering fucking toast.
Then they showed the first table read, curiously led by Mark Hamill, who doesn’t have a single line in the film. However, the sheer amount of nuances in his facial expressions for that final scene probably warranted a four-hundred-page screenplay in itself. Either that or they just told him to act like he’d soiled himself.
But without doubt, the best bonus feature is the making of the lightsaber snow fight. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Adam Driver all get to run around a night-time winter wonderland, swinging long, halogen light bulbs at each other while actually getting paid for it. In fairness, they all underwent vigorous training to ensure it didn’t look anything like the ballet bollocks from the prequels; the frosty setting even feels like a deliberate contrast to the Revenge of the Sith’s volcanic planet, Mustafar, which made about as much sense as building a submarine port on a blimp. But to my surprise yet again, I discovered that this brilliant location for a final duel was actually a set. The trees were real, but the snow was fake. At this point I didn’t know what to believe. Maybe they were just pretending to hit each other. Maybe Harrison Ford isn’t actually dead. No, that’s ridiculous. It’s true. All of it. I just put in the wrong disc.