How Harrison Ford’s On-Set Injury Helped The Force Awakens

It turns out that Harrison Ford’s injury on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a blessing in disguise. While shooting the film, Ford broke his leg when a hydraulic door from the Millennium Falcon set collapsed on him. On top of that, director J.J. Abrams broke his back aiding Ford. This naturally delayed shooting, but it also gave Abrams a chance to rethink the relationship between Finn (John Boyega) and Rey (Daisy Ridley).

According to io9/Gizmodo, Abrams discussed why the relationship between the film’s two main characters wasn’t initially working at the Tribeca Film Festival.

“When I was on the set of the Millennium Falcon and we started to do work with Rey and Finn, the first time we did it, it didn’t work at all,” Abrams said. “It was much more contentious. I didn’t direct it right. It was set up all wrong, and when Harrison Ford got injured—which was a very scary day—we ended up having a few weeks off, and it was during that time that I really got to look at what we had done and rewrite quite a bit of that relationship. So when we came back to work again, we actually just reshot from the ground up, those scenes. It was an amazingly helpful thing to get these two characters to where they needed to be.”

It might have cost Ford a leg and Abrams a back, but Rey and Finn’s relationship ended up being one of the best aspects of The Force Awakens. So there’s definitely a silver lining here.