Secrets of the Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey

One-hour documentary originally extra footage from the film on blu-ray, then broadcast on TNT. It shows the creative process of the movie "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", mainly with interviews with its management team and cast, not so much showing the backstage of the filming. The good thing about it is seeing a Princess Leia - Carrie Fisher still alive and the participation of the real Chewie Peter Mayhew - The Wookiee Roars, who later was directly replaced by his double. The bad thing is to constantly see Kathleen Kennedy, in my opinion the culprit of the big blunders of this great saga. Less interesting than The Skywalker Legacy (2020), because it lasts half the time and does not emphasize the behind the scenes which is definitely the most interesting thing. What yes some of the interviews here are repeated in that one.

1st watched 9/6/2020 - *bluray edited version* Well done, no non-sense, yet short documentary on the making of the 7th installment of the Star Wars series. I was not a fan of the first couple snippets where the folks being interviewed were asking questions about whether they could reveal certain things...I thought this was a little silly since we know the documentary came out after the movie did, and the title "secrets of" was not really accurate since it was a normal interview documentary after the first scenes. Other than this, the movie got right into the discussions about the making of the movie - and was just bare bones simplicity. The movie could have been longer with more details about the special effects, costumes and music but they instead kind of just ran thru the main characters and the actors who played them, and the director J. J. Abrams and writer Lawrence Kasdan's approach to the movie. I get the feeling they didn't want to bore the non-technical fan, but anyone going to see this at the film festival you would think would care about these things. The film in general was very interesting and for the most part kept me paying attention throughout. This is worthwhile viewing for anybody who enjoyed the movie, and even those who might not have.

This documentary shows how TFA was much more of a collaborative project than TLJ, which was just Rian Johnson's movie.

The actors and crew seemed to have a lot more fun making this film, and they seemed to have a better working relationship with JJ Abrams compared to Rian Johnson.

The TLJ documentary focuses mainly on Rian Johnson and his producer. Very little input from the actors. Most likely because the actors were not that happy working on TLJ.