Books A/V The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

A used speeder lot would have been an awesome scene! We could have had as many new vehicles there as we saw in the entire movie.

 

Don't buy it! It draws away the curtain and reveals much of the cluelessness, confusion and lack of creativity during production of TFA. There are some pearls inside of this but most is crap.

 

I LOVED the half Anakin half Vader concepts here. There are so many amazing ideas to be played with and developed from this book.

 

I feel like the movie revealed all that just fine on its own.

 

Yeah, I feel like the book shows all the creativity that the artists brought to it, and puts that in rather stark contrast to the sort of mindset that Abrams brought to it instead.

 

I enjoyed the book. I love looking at the concept art and imagining which ones will be used in future movie.

--Adm. Nick

 

What page is Ghost Ankain on? I have this book but it's kind of a monster, literally you have to do reps to lift it up before you read it.

 

Pages 44 and 103 are important there. But you should also take a look at the last page of the book.

 

Even thought I thought TFA was just alright, I'm really enjoying The Art of TFA. It's the only book I'm getting connected to this new film. I always liked the other "Art of" books.

In fact, in some cases I prefer the concept drawings of the characters/robots/aliens to the finished product(s) that ended up in the films!

 

Is there anything of Snoke?

 

Not much. I'm going back and forth on whether it's because they're reserving a lot on him for later on, or whether it's because TFA chose to "punt" the details themselves for the later films/Story Group to come up with. It seems likely that he was introduced only once it was clear that the primary direct antagonist would be Han and Leia's dark side son, hence needing someone to have corrupted him.

The two main interesting points:

• JJ Abrams was apparently fairly definite about him not being an old guy like the Emperor, which indicates that (while they might have dropped the ball on it some) there at least was a desire not to just present an arbitrary Sheev 2.0.
• At one point they considered - or at least drew art* - making him female. While it's probably coincidence, it's one of the more minor things that has made me wonder whether he might actually be an Abeloth-type character.

*It's important to realize that artists sketching out concept art doesn't always indicate an idea was actually planned, especially early on (Darth Talon was never actually gonna be in the film, folks). Sometimes drawing is just a tool to get the creative juices flowing.

 

My headcanon is that the Jedi Order was founded in order to defeat Snoke, but then Snoke corrupted one of the Jedi, and this corrupted Jedi then founded the Sith. Now that the Sith have been wiped out, Snoke has taken things back into his own hands. I've always felt that Abeloth was a missed oppertunity for this.

I heard that Snoke is shown wearing white. Is that true?

 

I don't have a scanner, but I really hope that the concept for a frigate that is essentially a larger, elongated CR90 corvette gets used in the Sequel Trilogy. Some of the other NR/Resistance fighter concepts are really cool too. I think the one I like was called the J-wing.

--Adm. Nick

 

Read a bit more, some of the more interesting bits:

Adams and Kasdan's first draft of the script was finished mid-December, 2013. But even then there was a lot of stuff still unfinished - Rey was still Kira, Kylo Ren's name and appearance were still undecided, a lot of the third act was (apparently, no specifics are given) still in flux. The names for the First Order and Resistance seem to be settled on by then, though.

On the subject of Kylo Ren, they mention that getting his appearance was one of the hardest things they settled on. A few months before filming, they still didn't have his look or even name down. Also until a few months before filming, he still just had a regular red lightsaber, no crossguard (there are close-up images of his original lightsaber design). At one point, the red-cyclops-helmet uniform later repurposed for the Guavian Death Gang was going to be Kylo's appearance (which would have been awesome). They also considered giving him his own droid (it's kind of like a mini-probe droid).

The idea of the Starkiller absorbing the material of the sun seems to be based on an idea one artist had that Kylo got his power by eating sun material (however that would actually work).

One aspect I found very interesting - at several points, the Knights of Ren are still referred to as "the gang that the Jedi Killer fell into as a kid", and they're called a "gang" a few other places, too. In all of their concept art, none of them seem to have lightsabers. Plus, as the book itself notes earlier, originally Kylo Ren was going to be part of a bounty hunter group, not the "Neo-Imperials". This makes me wonder if Kylo is going to be the only actual Force-sensitive in the Knights of Ren. I have a few other thoughts on this, but I'll save it for the Episode 8 thread.

During the Battle of Takodana, at one point the First Order was going to attack with these giant tripod drilling machines (having just seen Batman vs. Superman, they really remind me of the World Engine) that were supposed to drill into the "catacombs" beneath the castle. Which makes me hope for a story exploring that idea. Also at one point during the battle, Kylo was going to destroy an X-wing by levitating a cloud of rocks and smashing them into the ship. On the subject of the castle, at one point the design of the castle was going to be used for the Resistance base, and there's concept art of Finn being the one to find and activate Luke's lightsaber in the basement. (There also seems to be a piece of art depicting Maz Kanata on Jakku).

On the subject of Maz, it's pretty clear that she was always intended to be a woman, but on the other hand, the first concepts for Phasma clearly show a male figure.

The Quadjumper design briefly shown in the film was at one point considered for Rey's personal ship/speeder. There are some really neat wheeled First Order ground designs.

Ello Asty's original concept art name was "Bullhead".

For the Happabore, apparently they went ahead and built a model of it and had the model come out of a room to come up to Abrams when he was touring the art department one day, and that was what convinced him to put it in the movie.

One of the First Jedi Temple concepts show an eroded old statue along the steps leading up from the Falcon's landing area. There's an earlier image showing the remains of a huge statue that was cut down and its face scoured by lightsabers as part of a wider desecration of 'Jedi relics' by darksiders under the Empire. I hope that idea gets reused in some medium.

There are two small images for what's called the "Republic Planet", both monochrome. One is of the cityspace in general, and kind of reminds me Manhattan in terms of the buildings, plus there's what seems to be a river or waterway in the foreground. The tops of the taller skyscrapers are shrouded by clouds or smog or something like that. The other image shows what I assume is supposed to be the Senate building - it's just from the ground level, but it's clearly a really immense, blocky building with a colonnaded entrance with a statue on a pedestal in front of it, with a few beings and droids walking in and out of it.

The first time Snoke appears in one of the concept art pieces, they literally just use a picture of Boris Karloff.

Normally I would agree with you, the book is actually quite surprising me by how involved the artists seemed to be in coming up with ideas. It specifically talks about how Kennedy and Arndt (and later Abrams and Kasdan) are directly involved in art meetings at the beginning, how Abrams later on is involved, how they're told to just brainstorm ideas and concepts that might be good in the movie, and that especially after Abrams and Kasdan get involved, a lot of the third act ideas are stuff that the art team were told to brainstorm.

 

I wonder if VIII and/or IX will reveal that Starkiller Base sustained and/or powered-up Snoke.

 

I was looking for something online and happened across the Knights of Ren concept art, which I'd seen before but it never struck me exactly how similar Rebels' Eighth Brother looks like the fellow on the right (spoiler tag for size...):

Spoiler

Also because the internet can be awesome once in a while:

 

Both "Art of" books are currently on sale for 45% off, so I just ordered both this one and TLJ's!

Did the "Making of" ever come out, or was it just delayed to do the entire Sequel Trilogy together and keep any spoilers from coming out too early?

 

I think it was delayed so that it could be quietly canceled in a few years. I can't imagine any making of book to come out from the current crop of movies, too much seeing how the sausage is made. TLJ is the only one so far with an uncontroversial development and they didn't even announce a making of for it.