A Star Wars fan has recreated JJ Abrams' alternate opening to The Force Awakens
The original opening to Star Wars Episode VII saw a blown out Destroyer crashing into Jakku
Your fun fact of the day: The Force Awakens was originally going to start completely differently. Although the Star Wars movie begins with a shot of an Imperial fleet preparing an attack on junkyard planet Jakku, JJ Abrams’ storyboard from a long long time ago features a very different beginning.
Originally, the front crawl was planned to be followed by republic vessels towing a blasted out Imperial Star Destroyer into the gravitational pull of Jakku. And once it crashed on the surface, we would see Rey scavenge the ruined ship, a sequence that actually made it to the final film.
And don’t worry if you’re struggling to imagine this alternative opening: animator Tim Gray put together just what it would have looked like...
We don’t know exactly why this sequence was dropped, but in our mind, it starts the film with the wrong message. An image of a defeated destroyer suggests the Empire no longer poses a threat, that groups like the First Order could only exist on the very fringes of the galaxy.
The opening following a First Order attack makes for a more explosive start and also quickly establishes the galaxy’s new threat.
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Face it, the beginning we got is the one you were looking for.
