Harrison Ford’s ankle injury may have saved Star Wars: The Force Awakens from being a bad movie.
In June 2014 Harrison Ford injured his ankle on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This led to rampant rumors that major rewrites were underway to possibly remove Ford’s character, Han Solo from the movie. The Star Wars cast and crew would later take two weeks off before Harrison Ford was back to set. It was just one of many injuries onset of The Force Awakens. In fact, Harrison Ford also broke director J.J. Abrams’ back during production.
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However, Harrison Ford’s injury may have saved the movie. Recently, Abrams spoke with Chris Rock about Ford’s ankle injury, along with many other topics during the Tribeca Film Festival. One part of the discussion highlighted Ford’s injury being a blessing in disguise, allowing him to improve the chemistry between Rey and Finn. Abrams says:
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“When I was on the set of the Millennium Falcon and we started to do work with Rey and Finn, the first time we did it, it didn’t work at all. It was much more contentious. I didn’t direct it right. It was set up all wrong, and when Harrison Ford got injured — which was a very scary day — we ended up having a few weeks off, and it was during that time that I really got to look at what we had done and rewrite quite a bit of that relationship. So when we came back to work again, we actually just reshot from the ground up, those scenes. It was an amazingly helpful thing to get these two characters to where they needed to be.” (Via)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens would have probably been a completely different movie had the friendship between Rey and Finn been different.
(Via IGN)