20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: The Force Awakens
13. Luke's Role Was Originally Much Larger
One of the most oft-cited complaints about The Force Awakens is the tiny size of Luke Skywalker's role, that he only appears in the film for around a minute in its final scene.
Yet in earlier iterations of the script, Luke played a much larger role in the story, with co-writer Michael Arndt explaining that the decision to pare-down Luke's role was in order to keep the focus on Rey:
"Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy's ass... It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012... It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over... Suddenly you didn't care about your main character anymore because, 'Oh f**k, Luke Skywalker’'s here. I want to see what he's going to do."
As frustrating as it was to see Luke make such a scant appearance, it's hard to argue with the logic here, and we certainly got to see a lot more of him in The Last Jedi, that's for sure.