Star Wars: Harrison Ford Recalls Returning to Pilot the Millennium Falcon in ‘The Force Awakens’

Not all activities are as easy to recall as riding a bike, something Harrison Ford had to remind himself of when he returned to the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon for The Force Awakens. Almost four decades might have passed since he had to last pretend to navigate the ship, but Ford confirmed with Star Wars Insider that the process of piloting the ship never came easily.

“I spent a lot of years here, so it was fun to see again,” Ford shared. “I didn’t remember it as well as I thought I did. There are things I remember about the cockpit and the funny stuff we went through. On the original cockpit, I asked George [Lucas] to let us get into it, so we could try it on for size. Finally, we did get a chance, Chewbacca [Peter Mayhew] and I, to walk into the cockpit. Of course, he couldn’t get into the seat!”

Given that the high-tech nature of the craft, it became difficult for the actors to create a believable method for flying the ship, which Ford claimed evolved over the course of the original trilogy.

“Flying it developed a little bit between iterations of the first three films, but it started to come back to me,” Ford pointed out. “It was fun.”

In The Last Jedi, fans will also get to see Luke Skywalker’s reunion with the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

“I’m telling you, I didn’t expect to have the reaction I had,” Hamill recalled of the experience to Entertainment Weekly. “I was there with my family, with [my children] Nathan and Griffin and Chelsea and my wife Marilou, and [Lucasfilm] asked if the documentary crew could be there when I came back on the Millennium Falcon. I mean, this was not on the shooting day. I was just street clothes and going to visit that set. And I said, ‘Sure.’”

The experience was a profoundly emotional one, as he didn’t get to interact with the ship when he filmed his brief scene for The Force Awakens.

“It was sort of like visiting an old house that you lived in when you were a kid,” he continued. “I mean, I just welled up with emotion and I said, ‘I need to be by myself.’”

What helped make the experience more authentic was how accurately the crew had recreated the ship.

“They had recreated it down to every last detail that I remember. The oil drips, the hanging pipes, just everything. The dice in the cockpit,” Hamill pointed out.

[H/T StarWars.com]