The heart of “Star Wars” is the heart, meaning it’s not just about action. It’s not just about cool design or spaceships. It’s about the heart of the characters. And anyone who knows and cares about “Star Wars”, I think would agree with that.
Yeah, there’s great stuff to look at and it’s thrilling and it’s fun, but it’s only thrilling because you love the characters. And to me, it was always a story about family, whether related or not. “Star Wars” was always about discovery. It was always about alliances and loyalty. It was about friendship...
And for me, as an 11-year-old kid going to see “Star Wars” for the first time, my mind exploded because it was so sweet. It was so funny. It showed good in people. It dealt with evil. It dealt with good versus evil in darkness.
And the idea of the force, this thing that George created, such a powerful idea, and you can look at it all different ways, but for me, the notion that we’re all connected, that somehow there’s an energy that just connects all of us, it’s not about religion. It’s a nondenominational approach.
I hope I can go out and cross paths with and become the deepest of friends with characters like this, people that make me laugh, people that have–it’s just to me the humanity of “Stars Wars” was everything. And all the music and all the design and all the visual effects and all the stuff that was really, you know, great to look at and hear, it all was serving one thing, and it was the heart of the characters in the movie.
So for me, working with Larry Kasden, who wrote “Empire Strikes Back” and he wrote “Return of the Jedi”, working on the script with him and not just looking at a continuum of what’s happened in the time that’s passed and where are the characters that we know now, but being able to create new characters who have agency, who have their own sense of right and wrong, but don’t quite know where they are.
J. J. Abrams, December 16, 2015 (PBS)
The very first discussions we had were about feeling. What did we want to feel in this film? What did we want the audience to experience and feel? I know that sounds so stupid and obvious, but it was the most important thing to me. The absolute fundamental ‘What do we want the experience to feel like?’ [The team settled on a huge mix of things: exhilaration, thrills, heartbreak, joy, fear and spirituality, to name a few. And that lead them to the next step.]
Why are we telling the story at all? If we wanna feel that way, how do we do it? Who are these new characters? ‘Cause this had to be a new story about new people. And that was all gonna be about trying to serve that feeling...
I think that’s what Larry Kasdan taught me most of all, which is ‘Don’t work so hard. Trust the audience. Trust the characters and that the audience will feel more, in a way, the less you explain the stuff to them. And the challenge is always to make it satisfying and clear and not feel like you’re being preached to.
J. J. Abrams, December 09, 2015 (io9)
