You want all your character introductions to be A-plus.
You want to give each person their moment.
Even the Millennium Falcon.
Credit: Lucasfilm
That was [producer] Bryan Burks idea.
If an iconic starship gets a scene-stealing moment, then certainly R2-D2 deserved one, too.
But the writers grappled with a way to make his re-emergence special.
And of course Im like, No, no, no, Larry.
You dont get itat all!
And then she goes and kicks the bad guys ass, Arndt said.
It just never worked and I struggled with this.
This was back in 2012.
The trouble was a simple case of upstaging.
Suddenly you didnt care about your main character anymore because, Oh fk, Luke Skywalkers here.
I want to see whathesgoing to do.
The good news for Abrams was, he got to make aStar Warsmovie.
The bad news was, his toybox wouldnt include a real-life Luke Skywalker action figure.
Thats where R2 became a useful storytelling gear: he could be the missing framework.
And it triggers something that would ultimately wake him up.
So for those let wondering: BB-8s earlier question rattles around inside R2s dome for a while.
Those old astromechs must just take a while to boot up again.
