Via Moviepilot.com:

It’s been several weeks since Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens was released, and we’re still reeling from the film’s revelations. Star Wars 7 posed as many questions as it answered, leaving plenty of mysteries to be solved next year by Star Wars: Episode VIII. While The Force Awakens did give us some clues as to why Luke Skywalker is missing, there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding Luke’s journey.

In a new interview with EW, co-writers Michael Arndt and J. J. Abrams have shed some light on this issue. But the real reason for Luke Skywalker’s absence might not be what you’d expect…

It’s been several weeks since Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens was released, and we’re still reeling from the film’s revelations. Star Wars 7 posed as many questions as it answered, leaving plenty of mysteries to be solved next year by Star Wars: Episode VIII. While The Force Awakens did give us some clues as to why Luke Skywalker is missing, there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding Luke’s journey.

In a new interview with EW, co-writers Michael Arndt and J. J. Abrams have shed some light on this issue. But the real reason for Luke Skywalker’s absence might not be what you’d expect…

A New Journey

The Force Awakens was produced pretty quickly for such an immense blockbuster: pre-production began in late 2012, with script writers Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Arndt, and J. J. Abrams brainstorming most of the ideas that would be incorporated in the film. Unfortunately, because of the time constraint, Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt dropped out in 2013. J. J. Abrams explained Arndt’s impact on the story to io9…

“I know I want this young woman to be at the center of this thing. I know I want this Stormtrooper to abandon his post. There are just fundamental tenets of what we had come up with [with Arndt] that were gonna stick.”

Luke Skywalker’s involvement in the story, or lack thereof, was decided early on. At first, Luke was going to be a big part of The Force Awakens’s story, teaming up with Rey and helping her to defeat Kylo Ren. But as Michael Arndt explains, this would have been a huge mistake for the story.

“It just felt like every time Luke entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because….”

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