Star Wars: The Force Awakens brought us several new characters to love, but hands-down, one of the most-beloved new characters from the film is that orange and white circular astromech named BB-8. Just like R2-D2 in the original trilogy, BB-8 managed to bring a ton of personality to the screen without once uttering a word in English—or any other recognizable language, for that matter. Of course, that wasn’t always the plan for the tiny bundle of droid. There was a time that BB-8 actually communicated in English, not the beeps and whirs we’ve come to associate with droid language.
By now, you’re probably well aware that both Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz were asked to record the voice of everyone’s new favorite droid in Star Wars. We’ve all imagined BB-8 with the voices of some of our favorite Schwartz and Hader characters like a Jean-Ralphio or maybe even Stephon (“this droid has everything”), but thanks to a new featurette on the newly released Force Awakens 3D collectors edition, you can actually experience a small taste of Schwartz’s version of BB-8. The official Star Wars Twitter recently released this featurette with a taste of what could have been.
BB-8 speaks in “Sounds of the Resistance,” from Star Wars #TheForceAwakens Collector’s Edition. https://t.co/vOOTyXzurL pic.twitter.com/z1NUjT7nic
— Star Wars (@starwars) November 15, 2016
I’ve got to be honest, while I was really looking forward to hearing BB-8 tell Rey how Kylo and his Knights were “the wooooorst,” this does get your mind reeling at how different the film could have been if Schwartz had stayed the voice of Rey’s droid bestie. Ultimately, I think what makes BB-8 so perfect is that we never know with 100% certainty what the droid is saying. Still, I feel like in these trying times, the world deserves at least a featurette of Rey and Jean-BB-8-Ralphio exploring the galaxy, don’t you?
Would you have liked BB-8 to have a more human voice? What do you think of Ben Schwartz’s version of the droid? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
Image credit: Showtime
