And within this, we hear at least two familiar voices: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. On Saturday night, I interviewed director J.J. Abrams and his co-screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt after a Writers Guild of America screening, and they revealed how – and why – that scene came together the way it did.
Abrams also confirmed that some iconic actors reprised their roles: Ewan McGregor, Frank Oz… and a clever editing movie also brought the late Alec Guinness, who died in 2000 at the age of 86, back to the Star Wars universe.
“The idea of the voices was, we wanted the audience to feel – but not necessarily be presented right in your face — this idea that familiar, Force-strong voices were connecting with her. At least as well as they could,” Abrams says.
As they worked on editing the dream sequence, Bryan Burk, a longtime Bad Robot collaborator and one of the producers of the film, surprised Abrams one day with the gift of a single word: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice saying the name “Rey …”
“I said, ‘That’s cool, is that the thing from Ewan McGregor?’” Abrams recalled. “He said ‘No, we took a line from Alec Guinness saying ‘Afraid.’”
Not only that, but the lilt in his voice from that truncated word happened to fit exactly what Abrams had in mind. “They cut it, and you hear the performance – he’s saying it the way I would have begged Alec Guinness to have said it. It is so crazy perfect,” Abrams says. “So when you hear Obi-Wan talk to Rey it is both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor doing the voice.”
perhaps after they've explored the relationship between Obi-wan and the current main characters (i.e., REY) some more.
