Star Wars: The Force Awakens: How Harrison Ford injuring his ankle improved the film

'When Ford got injured — which was a very scary day — we ended up having a few weeks off'

While filming Star Wars: The Force Awakes, Harrison Ford managed to injury his ankle, delaying work on the film and leading to rumours of re-writes.

Thankfully, Ford was back flying the Falcon after just two weeks, giving director JJ Abrams just enough time to improve the script, mending the broken chemistry between Rey and Finn.

“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,” he told an audience at Tribeca film festival, as noted by Uproxx.

“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.”

Abrams is likely talking about a segment on the Millennium Falcon in the film, the one where Finn and Rey have a little argument over where to head next. For those who don’t remember the film so vividly, it is the part where BB-8 gives Finn a thumbs up. It is quite easy to see how, if not written correctly, that scene could have been more contentious than playful rivalry.

In other Force Awakens news, the film has been released on DVD and Blu-ray, angering UK fans as the deleted scenes are not included on the DVD.