8 Star Wars Movie Scenes Where Reshoots Are Painfully Obvious
Star Wars' worst reshoots! From Obi Wan's changing beard to Palpatine's missing lightsaber.
If there's one common filmmaking feature connecting all of the Star Wars movie trilogies, it's reshoots. Since 1977's A New Hope, directors on this franchise have never gotten it right the first time around, and all had to go back to correct little mistakes or entirely reshape plot points that didn't work in the initial cut.
That's not inherently a bad thing either, despite 'reshoots' becoming something of a dirty word in Hollywood over the past decade.
Yes, reshoots have led to big budget disasters like Justice League, but while they can indicate that a project has gone entirely off the rails, sometimes they can be the last piece of the puzzle that turns a good movie into a masterpiece.
However, even the smoothest scenes completed after principal photography can look a little awkward in the finished film. With actors having to come back months later sporting radically different looks, wardrobe departments losing key props or new dialogue having to be grafted onto already completed sequences, once you notice a reshoot inconsistency, it's hard to look at a film the same way ever again.
As a note, all of the following are reshoots that happened before the films hit theatres - George Lucas' special edition tinkering is its own beast entirely.
8. Rey Embracing The Force - The Force Awakens
By his own admission, JJ Abrams shot about 10 minutes of new footage after principal photography wrapped on The Force Awakens, consisting mostly of pick ups, close ups, and an added line here and there to create connective tissue between scenes.
For the most part they don't stand out in the finished film, but there is one reshot scene included in the final battle which sticks out like a sore thumb.
The lightsaber duel between Kylo Ren and Rey is an amazing sequence. Well choreographed and suitably emotional, Abrams, by suggestion of Ava DuVernay, went back after cutting the movie together to add two key shots.
The obvious one is the moment where Rey closes her eyes mid-battle and embraces the Force, echoing advice from Maz Kanata earlier in the story.
The key giveaway is just how disconnected this aside is from the rest of the battle. The extreme close up works for the emotion of the scene, but it (combined with the soft-focus blur of the background) makes it clear it was injected into a previously snappier sequence.